How Drivers Communicate
Does Information Bridge the Gap?
Table of Contents
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Kristin Subia | Andrew Shapiro | Kristin Evert | MaryElizabeth Pacheco
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In this section, I will be looking at reports what were written by
Kristin Subia, Andrew Shapiro, Kristin Evert and MaryElizabeth Pacheco. Each of these four people have written reports on some form of driver communication, I will be summarizing there works and with this information I will try to add a new dimension to the topic of driver communication by the end of this report. Ms. Subia's report many different situations were looked at and examined, these ranged from making turns to tailgating and overtaking someone. In most of these situations, Ms. Subia notes the negative communication that is being passed from driver to driver. I like the information that is given in each different situation, but I would like to see more information given about positive gestures that could be used in each of the situations. I think that this report should be the starting point for any generation that will be looking at the influence or messages that accompany gestures while driving.Ms. Subia also, talks about the different kinds of gestures that can be used while driving, but again she mainly focuses on the negative gestures. I think that she should have included a list of positive alternative gestures that people could use while driving.
In the report by Andrew Shapiro one of the most perplexing situations or scenarios is discussed and that is the four ways stop. I don't know that name of the person that invented this great invention, but I think that this person should have been shot or at least maimed in some sort of way. This situation brings both the positive and negative gestures right to a head and if people don't understand a gesture this could cause someone serious pain and suffering. (An accident or a confrontation) I think that there is only one thing more strenuous then a four way stop with stop signs and that is a four way stop with only a solid red light. (For those of you that haven't seen this invention, it is a four way light in the middle of the intersection that only has a solid red light in it. And the people that made this invention had the nerve to think that the public would know what the hell this little red light in the intersection meant.) When I find myself at one of these intersections, I tend to wait till everyone has cleared out of the intersection before I make a move; this plan of attack does not work when someone is waiting behind you. (You tend to make new friends this way.)
In Ms. Evert's report, a major focus was her observations of drivers communicating with each other on the roads. She did this by noting the different gestures that drivers used while driving in her car. I guess that this is the only way that anyone can get a real view of the types of things that drives use to communicate to each other. Ms. Evert is a personal friend of mine, so I feel that I can give an opinion on her driving, I hope that someone else was driving when she was noting these gestures. If not I can only pray for the people that were on the road with her while this activity was taking place. (It's a joke Kris!) In her recommendations section she talked about having a better drivers education program to help educate drivers on how to communicate. I really enjoyed reading Ms. Evert's report and a few ideas came to mind while reading this report.
Why doesn't the State Department of Transportation look into devising a standardized set of gestures for the public to use? This would help to reduce the confusion that comes with everyone using different gestures and signals. (Like if someone waved you on with his index finger, that might be misinterpreted as the "finger or the bird.") It wouldn't take too much training to implement it because it could just be given as another section of the drivers licensing exam. And with a set standard people could easily convey information and emotions to each other for example there could be a gesture for "I am having a bad day, don't mess with me!" On the other hand, "I am happy I will let everyone merge into my lane I think that these messages would replace the "bird" or yelling that can sometimes be heard on Hawaii's streets and roads.
The last report that I will talk about is MaryElizabeth Pacheco's report on how drivers communicate. I really didn't like this report because of the use of fonts in the text for example the paragraph that was italicized. I found it hard to read and it just didn't look right. Other then that, the report provided about the same views as Ms. Evert's report.
These reports have given me a starting point to work from on the topic of drivers communicating, where and how I will expand on this idea will be revealed later in this report. Therefore, you have to finish it to find out what kinds of new conclusions that I have come up with or if I "hit the wall" and couldn?t find anything new.
I used the search engine
excite to search the web for articles that are related to the topic of driver communication. I used the words driver and communication to start my search and I found this site, Hawaii Online Generational Curriculum Reports Generation 8, Spring 1998. Isn't it strangely ironic that the first site that I find when searching for information on driver communication that I find a page of awards for our class.I then changed search engines and tried my search on
Infoseek with the same words as before and I came upon this site, ROAD RAGE - WAVE IT GOODBYE. The information in this article turned out to be interesting because it talked about road rage and a simple method to "stop it" from happening and that was by waving at other people. This seems like a really simple answer to the problem of road rage, but is it really that simple? I am of the opinion that it is not this simple because of the problems that can occur with any simple hand gesture or with the simplest little motion. People have to be taught to be less aggressive and not to get angry when they think that another driver has offended them. This concept can be learned in improved driver education programs or driver safety classes. Sometimes I wish that problems like road rage could be solved or made to disappear by waving your hand in the air and saying "Hocus pocus."The next thing that I did was that I search the newsgroups for information about driver communication, to do this I used the
dejanews site. I used the words driver and communication and I found 3 posting that are related to the topic of this report.Here is the first posting,
Subject: Re: Road Rage in CA
From: gbarnhart3@webtv.net (glenn barnhart)
Date: 1998/04/17
Message-ID: <6h9424$bp6$1@newsd-142.iap.bryant.webtv.net>
Newsgroups: rec.autos.tech
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In Latin America they have some informal rules of the road. One is: If
you are driving next to someone, whoever makes eye contact LAST has the
right of way. I'd like to see the BMWs, etc. try their stuff down
there. They'd get run off the road and that would be the end of it.
It would seem that there are some forms of communication that are regional in use, I don?t think that this kind of communication would have a positive effect in New York or Los Angeles. I have hear of a phenomenon that happens in Japan, if you have behind a slower driver there is a signal that you can use to pass the other driver. All you have to do is to tap your horn and the driver in front will pull over or move lanes to let you pass them, and this is a widely accepted and used form of communication. Could this be used in Hawaii? I don?t think so because of the ethnic diversity that occurs in our state this the tapping of a horn might be seen as a insult instead by the other driver, which could lead to some violent form of retribution.
In this article talks about cyclist and cars
Peter Saint James <peterstj@ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
<6g925s$4m@sjx-ixn1.ix.netcom.com>...
> ae505@yfn.ysu.edu (Frank Krygowski) wrote:
> Here is something else to try along with what Frank suggested. This
> really works. Try it sometime. You will see a difference.
> What is your mental image of yourself when you ride in traffic? When
> you find autos passing too close, are you trying to make yourself as
> small as possible? Check the picture you have of yourself.
> Then picture yourself as big. Really big. Like a house moving down
> the street. You don't have to ride differently, just think
> differently. You will suddenly find that most of the autos give you
> more room.
> There is some kind of subconscious communication between cyclists and
> motorists that determines how motorists treat you.
>
I agree completely with Peter. When you are out on the road, don't
be half-assed about it. Assert your lane. There's no need to be an asshole
about it, but there are times when it is best to force people to ride
around you.
Act competent, hold a straight line, and the worst you may have to
deal with are a few insults.
I found it funny to picture a cyclist as big as a house or as small as a mouse. I think that drivers on the roads today should pay more attention to cyclist because of the damage or injuries that a car can inflict on a cyclist. I have seen the types of communication that occurs between cars and cyclist and for the most part, it is the negative type of communication that occurs most often. I don?t understand why some people get so much fun out of yelling or shouting obscenities at cyclist or they these people that initiated the conflict get offended when the cyclist yells back. Do they feel that it is their right because they are in their cars, like driving a car gives a person the right to be a pompous ass or just a dumb jerk?
The last article that I found was,
Subject: Re: Vince Welnick/Missing Man Formation, The Fillmore, 4/24/98
From: shawn@csa.com (Shawn Lucas)
Date: 1998/04/28
Message-ID: <6i5l4k$e89@goliat.c3.hu>
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
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Living here in the D.C. area one of the biggest news items of late is
"Road Rage" where one driver cuts another off and then is greeted with
a certain finger, which is responded to by a slamming on the brakes,
which is responded to with some nice tailgating etc. etc. etc. You
can see how the whole fucking mess just escalates to the point where
the people involved are out of control. Well if the driver who was
cut off wouldn't have filpped the 'ole bird and just let the "cut off"
pass then maybe the whole thing coulda been averted. You see where
I'm coming from here? I see a similar (though not as deadly)
situation (and possible chance for aversion) in these damn ongoing
flame-war threads.
I think that this article is self-explanatory, and it helps to show that some people are thinking of was to stop or to cut off road rage before it starts. This person probably never studied the topic before, but his assessment holds some water. If the person that was cut off doesn't take it as a personal attack then he wouldn?t flip the bird to the other diver and the situation dies immediately.
I have found it interesting to see the different ideas that people have about communication and driving. There are a few non-violent ideas and a few that are a little more off that wall, but I think that society as a whole will develop strategies that will help to curb the negative communication between drivers.
Instead of using the site index I just clicked around in the different generations to find others, that has done this report or something similar to this topic and here are the results and a little something about each report. After trying this method, I found the tree structure index that was created by
Quincy Tan, this Java enhanced tree structure simplified my searching in the generational files. Brandy Ashby in G7 wrote the only new report that I could find, I think that she had the same instructions as Ms. Evert and Ms. Pacheco.In her report,
Ms. Ashby talked about the same types of situations that were mentioned in Ms. Subia's report, and she also looked for information in a wide range of databases. Could this be were Prof. James got the idea to include the searches in ERIC and UNCOVER? I think that this is a distinct possibility, because this wasn?t part of the instructions for that report it shows that Ms. Ashby use initiative to enhance the content of her report. In addition, in doing so, she also help the future generations by giving them a new place to look for information.I used
ERIC to search for related topics within the journals that are subscribed to by the University of Hawaii at Manoa. These are the entries that I found during my search.Malfettit, James L. and Winter, Darlene J. Safe and unsafe performace of older drivers: a
descriptive study. New York:Columbia University, 1987.
Smith, Angela. How to be a Great Communicator. American School board Journal. V178, n8, p31-33. Aug 1991.
Malfetti, James L. Young driver attitude scale: The development and field-testing of an instrument
to measure young driver risk-taking attitudes New York: Comlumbia University, 1989.
Bowers, Barbara. Getting Aggressive about Road Rage. Best's Review: Life Health Insurance Edition, Nov 1997, 98,
61.
Schulz, Wolfgang. Traffic Management Improvement by Intergrating Modern Communication Systems. Ieee Communications magazine. Oct 1, 1996, v34, n10 p56.
I tried to find the database that I used to find articles of my other report, but I could not remember where I went to find that database. It was a little better then ERIC because it had the complete journal entry, so that you could read all of the information. If I have time, I will try to find that database to find more articles on this topic.
Well I have looked at the other reports that have been published by my classmates and I think that
Ms. Ishikawa's is the best report out of the bunch. I like the information that she collected and presented on the topic and the manner that it was presented. The use of color and images helped to give her report a sense of life and energy, I personally don?t use that format. I just don?t have the creative energy to pull off something like that. Other then that I found the rest of the reports are about the same in content and style. If any of you (people from class) feel that your paper is different and needs to be talked about e-mail me and I will make the change.In the book Challenging the Old Order by J. Peter Rothe, the idea of communication is talked about as it pertains to the general public. The ideas that are talked about are problems in the media and risk communication; I will break these ideas down and try to give you my own understanding of these topics. The topics of problems in the media environment can be broken down into separate areas clutter and information processing.
Clutter - is the total amount of media information that is being circulated at one point time, this overload of information leads causes information to be processed slower because of the overload of information.
In this age of rapid transmission of information it is possible to have information overlap or cloud the view or understanding of an individual as they are trying to interpretative a message that is being communicated to them.
Information processing - people are over-coming this overload by using informal heuristics involving the rapid scanning of messages.
By coming up with methods of reducing time in processing information, parts or information from the message might be missed or misinterpreted. This means that information has to be read or processed slower or a better method of rapid processing has to invented. (With a reduction in the errors that could occur.)
The other idea that was talked about was risk communication, I think that the information that is conveyed in this form of communication is linked to the responses that driver's get when communicating with each other. This concept can be separated into Source problems, Channel problems, Receiver problems and Message problems.
Source problems - largely have to do with deficiencies in the context or construction of the message, owing to the senders' inadequate knowledge base or misunderstanding or the media environment.
Channel problems - this is the means at which the message is being transmitted form the source to the receiver. (I.e. phone lines, television, radio, Internet, and other visual media)
Receiver problems - are generally understood to be the general public that receives that message from the source.
Message problems - in communications arise out of deficiencies in our scientific knowledge base with respect to many environmental hazards.
Therefore, any number of different problems can arise with a message that is communicated from the sender to the recipient. If this is such a common occurrence in media communication, does it also apply to communication between drivers?
I think that it does because I have seen situations were two drivers are arguing about a situation that took place between their cars. One person is saying that he just waved his hand to signal "thanks" for letting him into the lane, but the other person is saying that he was flipped off. Could this situation have just been a miscommunication of information from one driver to another, did the driver really wave and could it have been mistook for the "finger." If information can be changed in transmission, it could be possible that the receiver could have interpreted a simple hand gesture. This situation could be avoided if a standard set of gestures could be used that would leave out the possibility of being mistaken for another gesture. I will talk more about this in the conclusion section of this report.
The future generations that use this report can use the ideas or concepts that I will talk about a little later in this section. They can also, use this report to find other reports that are about the topic of driver communication and road rage because I have links to these other reports and a brief summary that explains about each report. It also shows them how to search the web or Usenet to find information on the topic of driver communication and it helps to show that others in the world are think and talking about this concept in a non-formal setting.
I think that the concept of driver communication can be expanded to include the ideas of generalizing the car to the driver, standardized signals vs. non-standard signals, and impressions given by drivers. I know that the type of car someone drives is the basis for a quick judgement about the driver of that car or of his habits. These types of judgements are made in a split second while people are driving and they help to control and guide the reactions of drivers. For example you are driving on the freeway when you see a car that has a few areas that are smashed and dented, the automatic response that you come up with is that this drive is dangerous and gets into many accidents. So you tend to drive more cautiously as you pass this car then you would any "nice" vehicle. This also, goes for the type of car that you drive because people have a tendency to believe that a person with an expensive car is a better drive or a will be safer because their car cost so much money. The car that a person drives communicates all of these ideas to you not by the person that is actually driving the car because these judgements are made before the driver can be seen.
After going over the information about driver miscommunication, I have come to the conclusion that a standardized set of gestures should be used while driving. This would help to cut down on the encounters because another driver misinterpreted a gesture, these signals could be taught in drivers' education or in some other school setting. In addition, for drivers that already have their license they could be asked to show proficiency with these gestures when renewing their license, it they cannot demonstrate proficiency their license would not be renewed. The only problem is that visitors would not know these signals, for the visitors from the mainland this problem can be solved if the standards were adopted on a federal level. This would require all states to use these standard signals, but it doesn?t solve the problem of visitors from other countries. Unless this could be the one thing that all of the nations of the world agree on, but I think that that might going a little too far. Therefore, we could just humor all of the visitors and not pay attention to the strange signals that they are using or just nod your head in acceptance. Another problem would be the abuse of the signals by individuals that are just jerks out to have fun. For example, the person would give you the signal saying that you can merge into his lane, but he doesn?t let you into the lane. A form of punishment has to be implemented, so that the signals would not be abused.
The facial expressions that some drivers have can influence other with out verbal communication, because of the non-verbal signals that they are sending out. If a driver has an angry or upset expression on their face most people tend to get out of their way when they see these people coming, so this could be some kind of driving strategy to get ahead of other people. Can this form of non-verbal communication lead to violent actions if someone misinterprets the facial expression and takes it personally. This could be a good topic for a paper next semester. HINT HINT
I think that the future generations can add to my ideas by trying to come up with a set of standardized hand signals that are easy to use and that cannot be misinterpreted to be another signal. Then the question of whether or not a sign or monitor on the car that gave text messages to other drivers and how it would affect driving in general. Or they could do something along the lines of vehicular communication (I.e. the car itself, the driver, or the attitudes or emotions that some cars illicit), how it affects the people on the road, this could be done by observation or by creating a survey or test of some kind.
Another option for the future is to meet in a chatroom at a designated time every other week and that would allow others to join in on the discussion and to add to the groups thinking. This way other experts in the fields of "road rage" could talk to the class and not have to travel to Hawaii to see us. Well these are the ideas that I have come up with for the future generations, I hope that you can expand on the things that I have come up with and I hope to read your reports in the future.
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