Children's Self-Witnessing Reports as Road Users

Kendra Morgan Report 2, Traffic Psychology, University of Hawaii

Self-Witnessing Behavior: What is it?

Self-Witnessing is a technique that can be used by all drivers so that they can monitor their feelings towards driving and being on the road. One of the ways to accomplish self-witnessing is to put a tape recorder in the car with you while you are driving and record what you saying. This involves verbalizing your thoughts instead of internalizing them (harder for some people than for others). This process may seem a little odd for some people who are not accustomed to speaking out loud when no one is around. If you feel particularly uncomfortable using a tape recorder, then there is the option of using a notepad. However, your hands are not always free to write while driving and this could pose a danger in itself.

Dr. James, my instructor, is a strong advocate of self-witnessing and believes it is one of the keys to correcting the bad driving that is so rampant on the roads today. "Unwitnessed road use is responsible for the current barbaric conditions on public roads. Self-witnessing is the cure for traffic insanity"(James). Self-Witnessing is part of Dr. James' three step plan to becoming a better driver. The plan is to Acknowledge, Witness and Modify. The first step is to Acknowledge that you have a problem, the second is to Witness your behavior behind the wheel and the last is to Modify that behavior toward improvement.

My Experiences with Self-Witnessing

I performed my self-witnessing by driving with a tape recorder in the car. Before I went out on the road, I looked at the information in Dr. James' site and in particular one set of questions that he has for people to look consider. This gave me some things to think about while driving. At first, it took awhile to adapt to having to say what I was thinking out loud. Of course, I have no problems singing along to the radio in the car when I'm alone, but talking to myself took some getting used to. I don't think that I am a particularly aggressive driver myself, I'm always too worried about getting into an accident or getting any form of moving violation.

When I reviewed my tape, I heard a lot of "humpff" and "sheesh", these are the sounds that I make when irritated by others. One of the initial problems that I had when listening to my first tape was that I wasn't always sure what it was I had been irritated about. So when I went out for a second time, I made a conscious effort to say exactly what I saw that bothered me.

My second experience with self-witnessing yielded much better results. I remembered to be more verbal and express my thoughts in a more thorough manner. One problem that particularly bothered me was excessive speeding. When a driver would go flying by me at 80 mph, I would get really annoyed. I used to wonder "Where is a cop when you need him?", because I wanted the person to get a ticket. In the past couple of years, I think that my attitude has changed to, "That person is going to hurt someone one day". This is an affective response to driving behavior, I have a legitimate concern for other people on the road, as well as myself. The greatest problem that I have with reckless drivers on the road is that they may hurt other drivers or pedestrians.

I had a lot of comments that followed these type of thoughts on my tapes. If someone would move into my lane quickly without signaling or run through a completely red light, I would complain about it. It bothered me because I see these drivers as being inconsiderate and self-centered. They don't appear to be concerned with being a responsible driver, just one who gets to their destination ASAP. I tried not to let this exercise put me bad mood, I also noticed that there were a lot of good drivers on the road. I consciously recognized those people who stopped at red lights, didn't tailgate me (or others) and used a degree of caution while driving.

Another thing that I often did was to make sarcastic remarks about other drivers on the road. If someone in front of me wasn't moving when the light turned green, I would make a comment like, "Hello, the gas pedal is the one on the right!" I never honked my horn or made an effort to communicate these thoughts to the other driver, I just said them for my own benefit.

This was an interesting activity for me. I also recognized some of the driving mistakes that I made. The one that bothered me the most was not stopping for people in the crosswalk. Dr. James refers to this as a concern for affective safety. Once, I was going a little too fast to safely slow down and stop and the pedestrian was already walking across the street. It was on a four lane road and the person was in the second lane, while I was in the fourth. I felt really bad that I wasn't able to stop in time to allow the pedestrian to cross and I criticized myself that I should pay more attention and be careful to slow down to allow people to cross. When other people don't stop for pedestrians, it bothers me, so I should keep up with my own expectations. Overall, I think that this provided me a degree of cognitive proficiency because I was making an effort to improve my driving my discovering what things affect me while I am driving.

Through the Eyes of a Child

One of the things I did prior to performing this assignment was to read a report written by Cara Lucey from Generation 6. She wrote a report on the same subject and I was able to get some ideas about how to approach using a child for self-witnessing. Ms. Lucey wrote a very thorough account of her own experiences with self-witnessing which was interesting and even a little funny to read. We both criticized other drivers' behavior sarcastically, but would never actually say the words face-to-face with another driver. While using her nephew as a subject, she found out that children were very perceptive to what was going on the road and that he picked up more than she would have expected.

Training a Child to Self-Witness

Teaching a 5 year old girl to be a witness to the world around her was not particularly easy. I'll call her Kim for this paper to keep things clear. I decided that we would observe as passengers in a car, with her mother driving, which took a lot of pressure off of me to talk and keep my little trainee focused. It was fun spending time with her and listening to her talk about what she saw around her, but getting her to clearly articulate her answers was definitely a little difficult. But with the promise of lunch at McDonald's, she was very willing to help!

Results

Like Cara Lucey, I found that children are highly perceptive about the world around them, particularly where safety was involved. She knew about the importance of putting on a seat belt before you start driving. I asked her where she had learned about seat belt safety and she told me from her mom and her teacher. Her mother also makes sure that Kim rides in the back seat of the car so that in case an accident occurs, she is not hurt by the airbag.

I was interested in learning how much perception Kim had about speeding down the freeways. I briefly explained to her before we left the house about the way that you can tell how fast a car is going, with 5mph being very slow and 100mph being extremely fast. While we were in the car with her mom, I asked her how fast she thought we were going and she guessed about 35mph, when we were actually going 55mph. When a car went speeding past us, she thought that it must be going, "Like, 80 mph, really fast", when it was probably doing about 65mph. I thought the difference in her perception of speed was interesting. Although children generally have a hard time guessing things such as age, or how much something costs.  They haven't developed the frame of reference with regards to speed to help make accurate assessments.

I asked Kim what she knew about traffic lights and she told me, "Green means go, yellow means slow, and red means STOP!", this learning was courtesy of Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Kim had a hard time determining when it was a good time to stop on a yellow light, rather than driving through. Her understanding was that whenever you see a yellow light, it means to slow down and stop (smarter than most adults I know).

Kim wasn't able to articulate how she would feel if someone was driving poorly, or how bad driving made her feel. She was a big fan of the phrase, "I don't know." The biggest thing for her was definitely buckling her seat belt. Her ability to recognize the impact that other drivers have on her car still hasn't developed.

If I were to perform the same project again, I would prefer to use an older child, because I think that I could get more detailed information. It was hard to get Kim to expand on her thinking and emotions because she hasn't learned how to express her ideas in other areas, let alone with regards to driving. Using someone between ages 11-14 would probably provide a greater volume of information of higher quality.

My Recommendations for Developing this Method

I think that teaching children to be more aware of their surroundings will be a useful skill that they can depend on throughout their lives. Learning to acknowledge that the events around you have an impact on the way you feel and developing your capabilities of responding is a good way to grow as a person. This type of thinking can be introduced to children in the classroom as well as in the home. Teachers and parents can encourage children to talk about how the events around them play a role in their own lives. By engaging children in active participation rather than passive viewing, we will be helping them to take part in society.

Future generations of this class can work on a plan that could be implemented in schools or developed into public service announcements. Include topics that students can talk about and things that they are likely to see fairly often. For example, the use of seat belts, speeding, using change signals, and driving responsibly. Encourage the children to discuss the proper way to drive and why it is important.

Epilogue

Writing this paper was interesting, but it took me awhile to find a child and a parent with the time to help me! I wanted to learn how much Kim thought about the effect that other driver's had on her, but she didn't exhibit a strong grasp of how cars interact on the road. Because she is so young, she has not been exposed to the idea of horrible car accidents where many people can die because of carelessness. I didn't feel comfortable elaborating too much on the reality of car accidents, but we did talk about people who get hurt sometimes. I think that this helped fulfill an affective and cognitive responsibility, by getting her to talk about the seriousness of driving and being careful. I really did not want to scare her or create any graphic images in her mind, just to stimulate her to think of what happens when people aren't wearing their seat belts, or if they drive too fast.

I would really recommend that people who have kids of their own, teach them how to self-witness. It is very important that we teach children to think for themselves and to also think of others, because our actions usually affect them too.

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