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Kris Yamauchi, G5, Report 2, Traffic Psychology
My Report 2:
Managing a Quality Driving Circle: You Can Help to Make a Difference
Kris Yamauchi
Report 2
Psychology 459
Dr. Leon James
Dr. James' Homepage - My Instructor
Visit My Traffic Psychology Homepage
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Traffic Psychology Through the Generations|
G1|
G2|
G3|
G3a|
G4
Driving Personality Test
Setting up and Running My Quality Driving Circle|
Session 1|
Session 2|
Session 3
Driving Improvement Resources on the Web
Introduction: You'll Never Know Until You Try
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Driving is a part of our daily lives. The necessity to drive is tremendous. But one question comes to mind . . . Are our roads safe? This I have to wonder. With so many drivers with an attitude out there on our roads, the simple task of transporting ourselves from point A to point B can be related analytically to committing suicide. I know this sounds drastic, but think about it. Each time we enter the roads behind the wheel, we are risking our lives to all of the unsafe and reckless driving that goes on each day. When we allow young juveniles to drive, it is like handing them a loaded gun with the attempt to kill, or an accident waiting to happen.
With the help and advice found on Dr. James' Generational Curriculum site from prior generations, maybe we can all learn to become better drivers, and begin to feel safe on our streets. By reading reports from previous generations, I have learned about Quality Driving Circles (QDC) and also how to manage one for myself. I have also picked up the philosophy that one person can make a difference and if everyone felt this way, soon enough all of the one's will add up to hundreds and then thousands and so forth until everyone becomes better drivers. If we make the effort to change, we might set the example and the precedence for others to follow our lead.
Traffic Psychology Through the Generations: What Other's Knew Before Me
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Generation 1
While surfing through Generation 1 Home Pages, I came across
Kendall Matsuyoshi's page. I found his page to be very interesting, especially when he talks about the invisible effect. I thought that this was hilarious because I've experienced this for myself a few times. I would be sitting in the car at a red light and then just by chance I would peer over to my neighbor's car only to find them picking their nose. The thing about it is that they don't seem to care or maybe they don't realize that others can see what they are doing. I often sing to myself in the car and I don't really care who looks at me. This is very odd because I am one who does not like to sing at Karaoke Bar's in front of my friends. I find it very embarrassing, but here I am sitting in my car singing away. I have to agree with Kendall about this invisible effect, because everyone experiences it at one time or another.
Michelle Ota's report struck me as being funny. Especially about people changing personalities when getting behind the wheel. I've seen this happen often with my family members and friends. Oh, alright, I'll admit it, it even happens to me. This is something that I just don't understand because when I think about it, I would never yell at someone face to face about moving too slow. It only happens when I am behind the wheel and protected inside of my car that I act this way. This is a site worth checking out if you too suffer from personality changes while behind the wheel.
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Generation 2
Aaron Takahashi
I found Aaron's report to be excellent because he covers all aspects of his topics. The topic that I focused on in his report was speeding. One statement that Aaron made was, "Why does the Department of Transportation post signs up limiting people to the amount of speed they are allowed to accelerate to? That's easy, So that drivers of all sorts can disobey them!" This statement of his fascinated me because it made me think that the rules of driving aren't any different from any other rules in life. What I mean by this is that mostly all of the rules set forth by the law are made to be broken. Okay, maybe not by all, but by many.
On a more serious note, how many of you actually drive within the speed limits all of the time? Aha, that's what I thought. Many of us don't drive within the speed limits unless we see blue lights lurking around the corner of somewhere behind us in our rear view mirrors.
Michael Balisacan
In his report, he talks about being that perfect facilitative driver. He gives us instructions on how we can achieve this goal in order of steps and plans. I think we all can learn a few things from his report because being a facilitative driver should become everyone's goal to make the roads just a little safer.
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Generation 3
Conrad Monero's page talks about denial and how the first step to overcoming your problems is getting over this denial phase. Once you start to accept that you have a problem, then the rest will soon begin to fall into place.
Troy Yamamoto talks about emotions of both positive and negative while driving. Check this page out to learn about the different types of emotions he observed of himself and how you may relate to some of the same types of emotions.
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Generation 3a
On Christy's page she talks mainly about Driving Personality Makeovers. She covers all bases from what a Driving Personality Makeover is, to who needs one. Also if it is for you, then what steps you need to follow in order to achieve a personality makeover.
Grant Muranaka
Grant's report was interesting because it covered all areas of driving and how our actions affect others. What he did was to compile driving behaviors from previous generations and shows us in a detailed compilation of how all of these bad driving habits can and do affect us directly and indirectly.
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Generation 4
Canaan Machida's report dealt with the issue of speeding. He talks about the seriousness of speeding and how the speed limits seldomly regulate traffic speeds. His report then goes to comparing and contrasting other countries with no speed limits and how they have low accident rates.
Ryan Mitsui talks about tailgating and his experiences with it. Reading his report got my adrenaline pumping as it was like watching Rescue 911 or something with real live people. I guess it's exciting to a point but just like his report, at the end he realizes that it is not worth it because of the dangers it could lead to.
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My Driving Personality Test
My Driving Personality Test was compiled from 3 Zones that I chose from Dr. Driving's Chart of Nine Zones I chose Zone1: Feelings and Safety Issues; Zone 5: Cognitive Self-Control and Judgment; and Zone 9: Sensorimotor Responsibility and Kindness. My questionnaire consisted of True and False questions.
(1) I feel impatient with the pace of traffic and it makes me feel as if I am being held back.
(2) I follow traffic signs and laws all the time.
(3) I become impatient while waiting at traffic lights.
(4) I dislike stop signs and think of them as yield signs instead.
(5) I dislike traffic authority figures, but control myself while in their presence.
(6) I always signal while changing lanes.
(7) I am never wrong for the mistakes I make while driving.
(8) I often blame others for my frustrations while driving.
(9) I often rationalize or justify my actions as a driver.
(10) I often analyze and make presumptions for other's driving behaviors.
(11) I let my bad moods influence my driving.
(12) I often express annoyance when missing a green light or parking spot.
(13) I often tailgate and chase motorists to teach them a lesson.
(14) I yell and gesture at passengers, pedestrians, and other drivers when upset.
(15) I become agitated because the traffic flow is moving much too slow.
(16) I grip the steering wheel too hard that it causes bodily pains.
(17) I often treat other drivers as enemies or competitors.
(18) I ridicule others for their driving behaviors and never my own.
My reasons for using these 3 Zones are because they deal with Affective, Cognitive and the Sensory Motor Skills. These three things are very important when dealing with driving. Kind of like the Id, Ego, and Superego in the sense where the Affective deals with your feelings, the Cognitive deals with your thoughts, and the Sensory Motor Skills deals with the actions and/or behaviors that you do because of what you feel and think. I wanted to use these 3 Zones because they cover the important areas of a driver and hopefully it will help to pinpoint the necessary areas for change.
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Setting up and Running My Quality Driving Circle: Are You Ready to Make That Change?
Introduction
Since we all lived together, setting up the Quality Driving Circle wasn't very hard. We used the time that we set aside each week to spend time with one another just to hang out and catch up with each others lives. This time was usually every Wednesday nights from dinnertime until 10:00pm.
My Quality Driving Circle (QDC) consisted of 3 females who are my roommates. I will be giving them new names that they chose to protect the innocent and they did not want their real names to be used in this report. These 3 females are my best friends and their age's range from 21-25. The names that I will use are Rhoda, Shauna, and Joy.
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Session 1
My first session was just and overview of what my assignment was to consist of. They all seemed very excited and cooperated with out any hassles. I asked them to brainstorm with me (as I took notes) just to see and get a glimpse of what bothered them as drivers. We spent about 20 minutes doing this and compiled a list of about 20-30 items of their pet peeves as drivers. I then gave them their assignment. What I had each one do was to observe themselves as they drove to and from work and/or school for the next week. They were to note down what things upset them, how they felt when they did get upset, how they dealt with it and everything else they could think of while they were driving that they deemed important. Another thing was that I had to ride with each one of them at least once during the next week so I could make my own observations.
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Session 2
At the beginning of this session, I gave Rhoda, Shauna, and Joy my Driving Personality Test. After they were done, I asked them to take out their observation lists and to talk about their week's experiences on the road with one another. During this time, I was correcting their tests. After I was through correcting the tests, we went over the test question by question so they would have a better understanding of it and so they would know where changes were needed to be made in order to improve themselves as drivers.
Rhoda turned out to be a very impatient driver and needed to work on learning to calm down while driving. She also needed to learn how to take responsibility for her own actions instead of blaming it on others.
Shauna, surprising as it seemed, turned out to be a very patient and calm driver. I guess when I rode with her, it was just a bad day. She really didn't need much help to change into becoming a safe and well-respected driver. Being the way she was, I asked her to do me a favor (which would then become her assignment) which was to help the other two (Rhoda and Joy) out as much as possible to smooth out the rough edges in their driving behaviors.
Joy was much like Rhoda. She was very impatient and very unnerving. I drew my own conclusion by the similarities of the two which is that they both have busy schedules due to work plus school and are always on the go, while Shauna only deals with school and a weekend job.
After discussing their test results, we discussed their observations for the past week and then compared them to my observation of them. We then looked at the test results and compared how they (test and observations) were related to one another. As it turned out their tests and observations correlated significantly to one another.
Now I gave them their last assignment and they had two weeks to do this one. Now that they knew their driving behaviors, their assignment was to try to change them and take note of it as well.
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Session 3
Two weeks have now passed and we meet again. The first thing I did was give them the Driving Personality Test over. We went over the test question by question and I gave them back their old test so they could compare and note the differences if there were any.
Rhoda and Joy increased significantly in becoming more patient drivers. They both felt that by knowing what behaviors they needed to change, made them more aware of their feelings and actions while behind the wheel.
Shauna, well she stayed the same, being that she didn't need to modify her driving behaviors. But one thing that she learned from this is how to be aware of the impatient drivers that are out there, and that even though she is a safe driver, she just might fall victim to someone else's negligence and become a statistic to the traffic fatalities of our state.
After our sessions, all 3 are now more aware of behaviors while behind the wheel and they all take driving as a privilege and not a game. They all felt that they took driving for granted and by taking a step back to analyze their driving behaviors, they now feel differently about driving. It's no longer just getting from point A to point B, but getting there safely. I'm really proud of their acceptance of learning their faults and their willingness to change. Hopefully they will be able to spread this positive feeling about driving to their peers and it will have a domino effect and soon we all will be safe and better drivers.
Quality Driving Circles are great to have and I really do think that it should be used more often throughout our community. Just think of all the possibilities it could have to making our streets a safer place to be.
Driving Improvement Resources on the Web: There's Always Room for Change
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Aaron Takahashi Traffic Psychology Homepage I found this site to be very informative for those who are willing to improve themselves.
TEENS A guide for teens and parents. Learning how to drive is very important, but so is safety.
Motor Vehicle Safety Safety tips to follow while behind the wheel. Everyone needs this type of advice to ensure a safe journey.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving Information we all should know about. Driving fatalities include more than just bad driving behaviors. Don't drink and drive.
Road Rage Quiz A quick test to see if you suffer from Road Rage.
AAA Foundation's Road Rage News Release and Report Summary Informative news about road rage and how it affects our society.
Street Safe Driving Here you can get weekly tips on safe driving.
Dr. Driving Says. . . Want to find out if you suffer from road rage? Visit Dr. Driving's Homepage where he helps you to find out your driving problems as well as helps you to solve them.
Honolulu Traffic Cam View Honolulu's Traffic through a Traffic Camera system.
The Art of Driving Tips on how to drive safely.
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