Being a Driving Buddy
What It's Like
Written by: Jennifer Kaneshiro
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There are two stages of a driving personality makeover in Dr.James' report on Traffic Psychology. This includes: 1) a reformed driver, a term used for an improved, modified, or corrected driver and 2) a facilitative driver, which is to be clear, forward moving, easy going and a smooth driver. According to the data on the Private World of the Driver in Traffic, these two stages have three different levels:
1) Affective level (A)2) Cognitive level (C)3) Sensorimotor level (S)
The affective level includes any of your feelings and emotions. The cognitive level is one's thoughts, reasoning, and decision making. the sensorimotor level deals with your actions. For a better overview I found Heidi Easley-(G4) and Sandra Scarbrough-(G4) to have excellent definitions and examples of these terms. Everyone works on different levels at different times. Overall, everyone has a single goal in traffic psychology, this is to become the self-actualized, facilitative driver. One of the ways to get to this goal is to do a driving personality makeover. Doing a makeover will help an individual become aware of their responsibilities on the road and to be acknowledgeable and respectful of others around them. Classmate, Dina Takahashi, has an in depth definition of the term Traffic Psychology. It's very interestng, you may want to check it out.
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According to Lori Kim-(G5),a driving personality makeover is an attempt to improve your negative attitudes or behaviors while driving. In order for a person to achieve this goal an individual must come up with a plan to overcome their negative thoughts and emotions. Chong Yun-(G5), describes a D.P.M. to be similar to a "makeover" many women get done. Each individual has a different plan made out for them and what may work on one, may not work on the other, says Michelle Alonzo-(G3). The first step to improve your behavior is to become aware and acknowledge your negativeness on the road. Once your aware of this, you are now able to conquer the second step which is to make out a plan and do some self-witnessing. The final step in doing a D.P.M. is to modify your old bad-habits and take control over your negative emotions and behaviors. Many times this process will take several months to accomplish this goal, but eventually you will notice the great improvement and feel good about your contribution to making the roads a safer place. If you want more information about the procedures to doing a D.P.M., I found Christy Forsyth-(G3a) to have put out a good explanation about this topic.
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I believe a driving buddy is someone who helps you become aware of your driving personality and helps fix your driving problems. This is an agreement between the two of you to help you control the negative behaviors you encounter when you drive. This is a mini self-witnessing, driving personality makeover done with the help of another, rather than doing it on your own. Click on classmates, Kristy Kato-(G6) and Chris Murakami-(G6) reports of what they think a driving buddy is to them.
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To do this assignment, you will need a car, a licensed driver, and two days or at least two driving trips. Like mentioned before, as a driving buddy you observe and take notes of the other persons driving the first trip and during the second trip you have the driver agree to drive the way you want them to. During the first trip you need to record your experiences and the drivers thoughts and feelings during and after the trip, with a paper and pencil or with a tape recorder-whichever one is easier to do, as long as it reflects your drivers true self. Amy Lam-(G3), and Nancee Aki-(G2),, had some good suggestions of the methods which they found to have the best outcome of recording data. The second driving trip will be used to discuss what you want them to change and they have to work on that one change the whole trip. This too needs to be recorded and discussed at the end of the trip. After both trips I will have to analyze and react to the change and give some future generation suggestions.
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The lucky buddy I choose happens to be a really good friend of mine for approximately 5 years now. His name is Mark and he's 25 years old. He's been out of college for two years and he graduated from the University of Hawaii, in business. He has been driving for eight years and has no prior records of any tickets, but has gotten into one major crash about 6 years ago. The crash was caused by his reckless driving. He was speeding on a winding road one night and he lost control over his car after skidding over a wet spot on the road. Luckily, instead of going over the railing, he dangerously spun out crashing into the on coming car. This crash didn't cause any serious injuries to anyone but did do a lot of damage to both cars. So now he doesn't speed around that road at night anymore, and even after all that, he still thinks he's the best driver in the world! I never got the opportunity to tell him about his bad driving habits-until now, how fun!!!
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The first driving trip was done on Saturday, July 26,1997. It was late morning 11:00 am with an overcast in some areas and clear blue skies in the rest. We took a drive from Hawaii Kai all the way into Waikiki and listed below are some of the bad-driving incidents I observed, this included:
- This first incident happened only 10 seconds after leaving my house, he did an incomplete stop at the stop sign. In fact, he did this at every stop sign we came to. This means at every stop sign he stopped after the white line painted on the ground. He didn't slow down before approaching the line, but when he actually reached the line. After the one second stop he would take a quick glance at the flow of traffic to make sure his lane was clear then speed up merging into the flow of traffic. I even noticed one time he didn't even stop he just slowed down, checked for cars and pedestrians, and speed away.
- The second incident happened while driving on Kalanianaole highway and he was a good five car distance from the stop light when he still went through the yellow light. I know many people do this and think it's normal to speed up when they see yellow, as a matter of fact, three other cars including the one in back of us went through the same yellow light. I think it's pretty bad when your still in the intersection and you actually see the light turn red because you know the other cars are coming now. This seems like a driving norm and an expected driving behavior for many people.
- During this whole trip, I noticed a speeding problem. We weren't in a rush to get to the beach, but he seemed to think we were. He didn't go more than 10mph over the speed limit and he was following the flow of traffic, so he wasn't the only one, in fact many others were going even faster. What I noticed was he was doing this action unconsciously. I know this because I asked him one time, "Do you realize your speeding?" He said, "No, I'm not speeding." I said, "Yes, you are, look your going 45mph in a 35 mph zone-duh, that's speeding." He just replied with, "Well look at everyone else, I'm just going the same speed as the rest of the traffic. What would you want me to drive like a grandma?" I really couldn't say much, so I shook my head and gave him a smirk.
- We got into a small traffic jam because the right lane was being blocked off for road construction, so everyone was trying to merge into the middle lane, the lane we were in. I didn't notice anything wrong with his merging, or anyone merging into his lane as long as they were doing it at the beginning of the sign. But I did notice he started to get very angry when other cars tried to cut in front of him at the last minute-right at the very beginning of the blocked off area. He started swearing and sticking finger at these people, saying, "I hate when these people do this, it's so rude, they shouldn't get to go, they should have to wait in back like everyone else did!" At one point he was so upset at all the other cars already in his lane because they were letting the other cars cut in front of them and this was slowing traffic down even more. When a car tried to cut in front of him, he wasn't going to let him in. He left no space between his car and the car in front of him. The other car kept squeezing himself in between the one inch space Mark was leaving. Mark finally let him into the space because if he didn't he would have smashed the front end of his car and that would probably upset him even more.
- This is another bad habit I know he has-he enjoys making quick, sharp turns. So the incident I got to witness was when he was making a left turn on to a side street, he just whipped the turn. He might of slowed down a little bit before the turn, but once he got into the turn he pressed on the gas even harder-I was almost sitting on his lap he took the turn so fast. His theory of why he does this is because he bought a good suspension for his car and thinks this is fun because no one else is able to do it, so his attitude is, why slow down for when your car can handle.
- Another commonly done incident during the duration of this trip was following too close. Most of the time, he didn't leave more than a car to a car in a half space between him and the car in front. I asked him, "Why do you gotta follow so close? You know, the rule of thumb is to leave at least three lengths between you and the car in front." He replied with, "I'm not following that close, look there is plenty of room for another car. Anyway, when your a good driver like myself, your just good and can handle any situation that comes along." I had to say, "Oh my goodness, How can anyone be so arrogant and think that way, how can anyone think they are just so perfect?" He replied with, "Hey, what can I say." I realized he's always had this attitude and all I could do was roll my eyes with disgust.
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For the second duration of this assignment, as a driving buddy I was supposed to have Mark agree to and drive the way I want him to. I feel the best way to fix anything is to focus on fixing one thing at a time. So for this trip I decided to work on his speeding problem. We took this trip three days later, Tuesday, July 29,1997. This time we went from Hawaii Kai to Rainbow Drive Inn, I decided to buy him some lunch for helping me out with this assignment. We left my house in Hawaii Kai around the same time we left the last time, 11:30 am, another clear, bright and sunny day for driving. Before we left we actually sat in his car for about two minutes discussing what I observed the last time and what I want him to work on this time-speeding. Then we were off.
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For the first day, at first, he acted as if he was the best driver in the world and nothing could be wrong with his driving. I think in the beginning he even tried to do things good on purpose, because he was being analyzed, so he wasn't being natural about his actions. I told him, "To stop acting because I know how you really drive." So after the first five minutes he ignored my writing and started to drive the way he really drives-the driving demon appears! During this trip I slightly mentioned what I was writing and he mostly denied the actions he was doing at that particular moment.
For the second day, I mentioned all the things I noticed he did wrong and the first thing he said was, "No, I don't do that!" Since he didn't believe me I brought out the tape I used to record his reactions, he didn't know I was going to use the recorder against him. It's always easier to ignore and reject comments coming from someone's opinion that was written down, but when they actually hear their real thoughts and feelings on tape it's a little easier to believe. So I played the tape for him and after listening to himself he thought it was funny at first, then he started to realize how angry and arrogant he could actually be.
Like I mentioned above, I decided to work on his speeding habit he has. In the beginning he still didn't believe he had a problem. We started to drive and after the first five minutes I told him to watch his speed. He did cooperate for the first half of the trip, then after awhile he started getting irritated because it seemed like every 5 to 10 minutes I was giving him a reminder. I then noticed when he started getting irritated he became less cooperative, more aggressive and more resistant.
I asked him how he was feeling whenever I reminded him about the speeding issue. He said, "At first, it was OK, but after awhile I hated it because you sound repetitive and that's irritating." then I asked him, "Why don't you just fix the problem and do what was agreed upon at the beginning of this trip-No Speeding!" He said, "But I don't think I really am, well look at all these other people, I'm just going with the flow of traffic. Besides I don't like it when people tailgate me."
By this time we were both getting a little irritated at each other so I decided to let him drive the way he wanted to. I was kind of upset for awhile because this wasn't working like how I wanted it to, but it made me realize that I don't think he was being hostile just to screw my project up, I think he doesn't realize the dangers and hasn't acknowledged the problem enough for himself. Until he sees the problem himself, he's not going to change the problem. I feel the reason why he does speed all the time is because of the automatic driving self theory. This theory describes the individual and the way he has trained himself to drive automatically. Everyone has a different automatic driving self which makes everyone do different things naturally and subconsciously. Sometimes people use this theory to justify their actions of their bad driving habits and doesn't realize the dangers they are actually putting themselves, the passengers, and the drivers around them, in.
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I really enjoyed this driving buddy project and I feel many people can benefit from this experience. Groups such as drivers education, CARR (Children Against Road Rage), and QDC's (Quality Driving Cirlces), should all generate this project into their programs. It is easy and fun. I think this would be a good idea for people in quality driving circles because this project may give them the step forward to improving their bad automatic self driving habits. People taking drivers education can benefit from this because they will be able to observe the bad-habits and make their automatic-self habits good instead of learning them bad and then trying to change later like most of us. I even think it could be a good idea for CARR (Children Against Road Rage), because this is an opportunity for children to become aware of traffic psychology. I feel if this is learned early in their lives until the time comes for them to actually drive, I think this generation could be excellent drivers. Maybe they can teach the old generation or over power them enough so that the roads are safer for everyone, this includes road rage and aggressive driving. I also think to make this driving buddy project a little more effective, you could maybe do this for one week instead of two days. And definitely let them do some self-witnessing on themselves because if they are able to hear the kind of comments they make, I think they may realize the negative attitude they have toward other drivers. This negative attitude of resistance, hostility, and anger is also called aggressive driving. Everyone needs to realize the dangers they actually are putting themselves and many others in and try to correct it to make driving a safer situation for everyone.
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