Summary of How Drivers Communicate With Each Other
Summary of How Drivers Communicate with Each Other: The Hardest Language to Learn
Summary of How Drivers Communicate With Each Other: What Are We Saying to One Another?
My Searches on Usenet and the Web
A Few Reports on How Drivers Communicate that Interested Me
Summary of How Drivers Communicate
With Each Other
This report
done by:
Kristin Subia takes the reader through different situations and sheds
some light on ettiquete while drivig on the road. The situations
that she analyzes are: Making turns; Changing lanes; yielding the way;
Making room in one's lane for someone; racing; tailgating and overtaking.
She gives an analysis as to how to react in these situations. Kristin
goes over several ways of communicating while in the car. They are:
vehicular communication; verbal communication; gestures and facial expressions.
Simply put vehicular communication means using the blinkers, hazards etc.
verbal communication would consist of cussing in the car or talking to
the passenger and expressing your feelings. Gestures and facial espression
consists of frowning, giving a thumbs up, wave to go on or a nod.
Kristin gives
us little recommendations, she believes we should continue to do what we
have been doing. She does not like the idea of flip card because
she feels that it would become to confusing. The idea of gestures
to her is a little more feasible but they too have their drawbacks.
According to Kristin gestures can be easily misinterpreted and misused.
Summary of The Effectiveness of the
Gestural Communications Involving Drivers Requesting the Right-of-Way
This report done
by: Andrew Shapiro
gives us an in depth view of the communication that goes on at a four way
intersection. Andrew covers the emotional states that could affect
these drivers at a four way intersection. He gives us a two day analysis
of a very busy intersection, the kinds of communication used and peoples
reactions to them. Andrew finds that less than one percent of the
drivers that went through the intersection used a gesture or some form
of communication to pass. he did find that most drivers used "courtesy
and common sense" of the California Vehicle Code. Of the few gestures
or means of communication few to none seemed intentional or conscious of
what they were doing. The example of the women reaching the stop
line reaching into her purse to find a lighter to light her cigarette was
a pparntly an example of shunning the other driver. He also found
a great deal of incivility at these intersections with people flipping
the bird, shaking their head, or honking the horn. In just about
all of these instances he found that the offender did not pay much if any
attention to the offensive gestures as if they were immune to it.
Summary of How Drivers Communicate
with Each Other: The Hardest Language to Learn
This report
is an obsevational study conducted by:
Kristin Evert. He has his own set of predictions which he tries
to prove or see if they are true. After completing his observations
he came to the conclusion that "the few overshadow the many". He
means that the few bad experiences that we have while driving tend to overshadow
the many good experiences that we may have. Kristin only has three
observations of intense or negative driver communication. He describes
each one and gives an evaluation of them as well.
Kristin gives
a recommendation of "can't we all just get along?". He goes over
some suggestions of using cards or gestures as a bad idea because they
are too complicated and near to impossible to implement. He does
like the idea of better drivers education to include road rage topics and
common courtesy to start at an early age. He also has an idea of
reward by noticing the good drivers in the newspaper or news, something
cheap yet effective.
Summary of How Drivers Communicate
With Each Other: What Are We Saying to One Another?
This report
done by:
Mary Elizabeth Pacheco is similar to that of Kristin Evert's.
She does an observational study that is very neat and descriptive.
She goes over the time, place, make and model of the car as well as what
occured. Mary tries to describe what the drivers are trying to communicate
in her observations and their method of communication such as smiling,
waving' nodding, signaling etc.
My Searches on Usenet and the Web
Subject: Re: Road signs
From: "Tim Archer" <arche_tr@eelab.usyd.edu.au>
Date: 1998/04/08
Message-ID: <01bd62b8$fd512520$14e14e81@client-83.stpauls.usyd.edu.au>
Newsgroups: aus.cars
[More Headers]
[Subscribe to aus.cars]
Brian Miller <max@dynamite.com.au> wrote
> There is a TV commercial currently running that shows a number
> of ways that drivers can vent their aggressive and hostile feelings
> to other drivers by way of hand signals.Are you serious? You mean they actually went through with this idea?
Sometimes I wonder.You'd think they could do better things with their money than TV
commercials with people making stupid gestures. Like getting defective
vehicles off the road...I do not know I think that this commercial sounds fishy. I do not like the idea of too many gestures because they will get awfully confusing. As it is there are signals or gestures that we may do here that will be the complete opposite elsewhere.
> Like everyone, I sometimes make mistakes when driving and would like
> to convey my apology to the driver who I have inconvenienced. But
> there seems to be no sign language to convey the expression "I'm
> sorry". A wave of the hand can be misinterpreted.I have to agree with this person in that I too make mistakes and when I do I wish there was a way that I could tell them that I was sorry. The way that I look at it is to just drive safely in the first place that way you do not have to apologize. BUT, the thing is that it does not happen that often if at all and I just feel guilty for infringing on another person.
I remember when Bob Carr (assuming this is NSW we're talking about)
announced this last year ... he had come up with a gesture for "I'm sorry".
It was patting the top of your head with your hand (perhaps fist).Pretty pointless idea IMO. Why not concentrate your efforts on driving
better in the first place? Saying sorry, as much as it might be
appreciated by the other party, is not actually very productive when it
comes to road safety.This person does have a valid and reasonable point.
BTW, the the commercial recommend the one figer salute for saying "F*ck
you!"? :)
Tim
Subject: Re: flashing your lights - what does it mean officially ???
From: johnd@globalnet.co.uk (John Duckett)
Date: 1998/04/15
Message-ID: <3536e697.1152661@read.news.global.net.uk>
Newsgroups: uk.rec.motorcycles
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[Subscribe to uk.rec.motorcycles]ben@lovejoy.demon.co.uk (Ben Lovejoy) wrote:
>>A friend of my dad's perceives (and always has) the flashing of
>>headlights to mean the highway code type definition
>>Beware, such people *DO* exist!
>
>I encountered one a few years back when I was waiting to turn right into a
>car-park. Fortunately his speed (about 50 in a 30) gave the game away and I
>stayed put.I'm surprised that you've only encountered one. There are still many of us who
use our lights correctly, although sadly we are now a minority. I tend to use
hand gestures now, hopefully to avoid confusion.>The annoying thing is that no blame at all would have been accorded to him
>had I treated his signal in the way it is used by 99.999% of the driving
>population.An why should blame be accorded to someone following the highway code! If you
had moved, resulting in an accident, then you would have been to blame. What
annoys me is your annoyance with people who follow the rules.Ah the flashing of the lights. I have seen this and sometimes do it for different reasons. We have discussed this topic in class and come up with some valid reasons why people may do this. I for one will occasionally flash my lights if I see a person driving with their lights off in the middle of the night. Another time I may flash my lights is when I am behind a person with their blinker on (this only works at night). I believe the last reason that I will flash my light is to warn oncoming traffic of a speed trap ahead that they may not see or be aware of. As for a general rule of what it means I am not sure but I feel that the time and circumstance is explanatory enough.
Subject: Re: Ever feel like you've got a "CUT ME OFF" sign on your car?
From: dripton@netcom.com (David Ripton)
Date: 1998/04/17
Message-ID: <driptonErKy4F.KGH@netcom.com>
Newsgroups: rec.autos.driving
[More Headers]
[Subscribe to rec.autos.driving]In article <354001d6.11031034@NEWS.TICNET.COM>, Marc <Gumbyy@ticnet.com> wrote:
>tomlinsc@ix.netcom.com (Chuck Tomlinson) wrote:
>>see@message.text (Adrian Vickers) wrote:
>No one around here uses their horn. It is perfectly acceptable to
>look offended when someone uses the horn. The last time the person
>behind me honked at a light, I turned around and looked at him and
>mouthed and gestured "me?" to piss him off even more by not moving.
>He began pointing frantically and gesturing for me to go. I took my
>time. And if you are wondering, no one behind me didn't make the
>light because of the delay.Horn use is very rare around here, too. (Washington DC burbs.)
Angry people gesture instead of honking. Then the offender
pretends he doesn't see the gestures and resumes talking on his
phone.I've had three occasions to use my horn in the last week, though.
Must be some kind of record for this area. (Yes, I know that in
New York that's about a minute's worth.)I can also claim that here in Hawaii we do not use much of the horn. Only under unusual or dangerous circumstances is the horn used here. I think it is most commonly used to get the attention of someone you know on the road to notice you. When someone honks here everyone looks and is actually offended by it if it is directed towards them. I think for the most part if I ever get honked at I am curious to see who it is then I have to think if I did something wrong while wondering who he thinks he is honking at me.
1. Driving along a crowded two-lane road on my morning commute,
following a black Cavalier with a elderly woman driving. I'd
been behind her for long enough to know that she was an extremely
bad driver, so I was paying special attention, waiting for her
to do something stupid so that I could avoid being involved.
Sure enough, we came up to a red light, and she didn't brake.
I honked like mad, trying to wake her up. Didn't work. She
plowed through the red and T-boned a Cadillac. Luckily, she
was only going about 25. I'll be very surprised if she even
gets the same fine as the average speeder who doesn't hit
anything.I think that it is great that this person cares for the old woman in front of her and is assertive to what is ahead but I think that the use of the horn in this particular instance was or could have been easily misinterpreted to hurry up. All the honking could have startled the lady to try to beat the red. For all we know she could have wanted to stop but the person honking behind was trying to hurry her up in her mind.
2. Crowded intersection with left turn lanes all around. I'm
at the head of the line. Watching the other light, knowing
that I'd get the green in a few seconds. It turned yellow. I
put my car into gear. A couple of cars went through. It
turned red. A couple more went through. Two seconds later,
mine turned green. I started to go. An idiot in a SUV
amazingly decided to run his red, after I was already entering
the intersection. Right of weight; I stopped. He got the horn,
ignored it, continued his sloppy body-leaning unsignaled light-
running turn into the wrong lane, almost clipping the front of
my car in the process, and plowed on down the road in search
of children to run over. I resisted the urge to hunt him down
and kill him for the good of mankind and end up looking like a
bad person on the evening news.I think that the horn in this instance was more appropriate although not necessary. Granted the person ran the red but what does honking do but possibly escalate the situation. If you ran a red, just suppose you did and someone started honking at you would you slow down to see what this other mad man wanted or try to make a clean get away? I would probably not want to be identified in the sense of what I look like. I may feel ashamed or bad besides the fact what was just done was wrong. Or had this been a madman he could have turned around to see what the problem was.
3. Four-lane divided road, with lights and left turn lanes
where it's legal to turn on the green if it's clear, not
just on the arrow. I approach a green light, with a big van
in the left turn lane on my side of the road, blocking all
view of the left turn lane on the other side. Line of sight
is usually reciprocal, so my thumb moves to the horn button
and my attention to the invisible left turn lane. Of course,
there's a VW driver there, using that great rule of thumb
"if I can't see whether anything's coming, I might as well
go and hope for the best." As I spot Ms. Russian Roulette
1998, I honk, accelerate (too late to brake), and move
right into the paved shoulder / acceleration lane to dodge
the accident. She successfully panic-stops, making that
handling test unnecessary. She made up for her bad judgment
with good reflexes, anyway.I think I need a louder horn. 1 out of 3 just doesn't
cut it.--
David Ripton dripton@netcom.com
spamgard(tm): To email me, put "geek" in your Subject line.
A Few Reports on How Drivers Communicate that Interested Me
My Searches through ERIC and/ or Uncover
Hargett, James. (1989). Riding Technique: Keeping drivers
friendly: Eight Common Sense Tips for Sharing the Road,
v30n7,58.
Giles, H. One for the Road Then? International Journal of Applied Linguistics,
1992, 2, p.139- 165.
Malfetti, James L. Young driver attitude scale: The development and
field-testing of an instrument to measure young driver
risk-taking attitudes New York: Columbia University, 1989.
Schulz, Wolfgang. Traffic Management Improvement by Integrating Modern
Communication Systems. Ieee Communications
magazine. Oct 1, 1996, v34, n10 p56.
Smith, Angela. How to be a Great Communicator. American School board Journal. V178, n8, p31-33. Aug 1991.
Vail, Kathleen. Drive safely. American School Board Journal, 1996, 49-52.
Reel, J. Just Make a U-turn-Nobody Cares! A Cross-Cultural Look at
Taiwanese and U.S.
Attitudes toward Rules. A Symposium on Professional
Communication in an International
and Multicultural Context, 1994, p.15.
Gusfield, J.R. Risky Roads. Society, 1991, 28, p.10-16.
Giles, H. One for the Road Then? International Journal of Applied Linguistics,
1992, 2, p.139-
165.
Arnett, J. Understanding Reckless Behaviors in Adolescence. 1989.
Adams, K. and others. Nevada Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 1995.
Steering Kids to Traffic Safety. PTA Today, 1991, 16, p.11-12.
Conclusion
Ways in which I think future generataions will benefit from these reports
on How Drivers Communicate are: through class discussion, furthere elaboration
on these topics. Defining ways to improve and distinguish other methods
of communication.