Why Highways are Good Laboratories

1. Why Highways are Good Laboratories • High traffic volumes facilitate the study of infrequently displayed behaviour • Drivers may feel deindividuated • Low probability of future encounters with same drivers • Multiple stressors present in highway driving • Automobile is a weapon as well as a means of escape • Certain behaviours (e.g., vengeance) may not be seen off the road • Highways are ubiquitous

2. Behaviours that could be studied on roadways: • Prosocial behaviours (helping, courtesy, cooperation, etc. • Anti-social behaviours (aggression, violence,vengeance) • Social influence processes (conformity, modelling, norm formation, etc.) • Deindividuation • Cognitive processes • Wayfinding and route learning • Stress and coping

3. Why not more research on driving behaviour? • Funding difficulties: too applied for psychological funding agencies and too academic for road safety professionals • Road safety professionals are mostly engineers and tend to view problems as attributable to technical reasons and see engineering solutions to problems • The problem driver has traditionally been viewed as the alcohol consuming driver, so attempts to control this problem has dominated the international agenda • Difficulties in securing cooperation to study behaviour on roadways • Laboratory research is easier and more convenient to perform

4. Aggressive Driving and Public Concern • Traffic Injury Research Foundation Survey (Ottawa): 1200 telephone interviews across Canada • 65% indicated aggressive driving constituted a serious problem and felt it was a greater danger than sleepy drivers, road conditions, or vehicle defects • 74% viewed red light running a serious problem • 2/3 considered speeding a serious risk • Women felt more threatened than men • Ontario drivers reported more encounters with aggressive drivers than those in other provinces

5. Aggressive Driving and Public Concern • Toljagic (2000) indicated that 38% of Ontario drivers reported some abusive behaviour over the past year • Goehring (2000) reported 90% of AAA members witnessed an aggressive driving incident over a year • Wald (1997) estimated 28,000 highway fatalities in the USA were attributable to aggressive driving • Rasmussen, Knapp & Garner (2000): 22% of drivers in Las Vegas reported other drivers to the police. Major sources of annoyance: slow drivers, children not in child seats, tailgating, tourists uncertain of route, cars weaving in and out of lanes. They perceived an increase (76%) in aggressive driving over a 5 year period and felt Las Vegas drivers were worse than elsewhere (58%).

6. Opinion Search conducted a 75 item telephone survey in September 2006 6,075 household contacted, but 73% refused to participate 7.5% were not eligible for the survey (the respondent had to have driven in the past 30 days 1,201drivers completed the survey Sample accuracy = 2.9% 19 times out of 20 Aggressive Driving: TIRF 2006 Road Safety Monitor Survey

7. Aggressive Driving: TIRF 2006 Road Safety Monitor Survey • 88% of Canadians believe aggressive driving has increased over the last 5 years • 2.7 million admit to exceeding the speed limit • 2 million admit to speeding to get through a traffic light • 670,000 admit they take driving risks for “fun”

8. Aggressive Driving: TIRF 2006 Road Safety Monitor Survey Characteristics of Aggressive Drivers: • Twice as many male aggressive drivers than females • Drivers 16-24 are more likely to use their horn • Drivers 16-44 were more likely to behave aggressively in traffic • Aggressive drivers reported at least one traffic ticket

9. Aggressive Driving: TIRF 2006 Road Safety Monitor Survey Support for Measures to Control Aggressive Drivers: • 63% agree that aggressive driving should receive greater attention from police • 51% believe penalties for aggressive driving should equal those for intoxicated driving • 43% agree that vehicles should have speed limiting devices

10. Suggestions for Reducing Highway Aggression • Tension reduction strategies: • Use cell phones to inform others of delays • Listen to traffic reports and use alternative routes where possible • Listen to music, books-on-tape in cars while driving • Anger management • Screen all drivers • When a given demerit point level is reached, provide anger management workshops • Enforcement of highway traffic act • Tailgating • Signalling of lane changes • Use of left lane as passing lane

11. Suggestions for Reducing Highway Aggression • Promotion of mass transportation • Deindividuation reduction: • Paint driver’s names/towns on doors and backs of vehicles • Ban deep tints • Promote vanity licence plates

13. Main Findings • Trait X State stress interaction: congestion does not affect everyone the same since high trait stress drivers reacted more strongly to high congestion situations • No gender differences • No difference in coping responses across congestion conditions • Drivers prefered direct coping responses, but used both direct and indirect behaviours equally • Compared to other responses, aggressive behaviours dramatically increased as traffic congestion increased

15. Frequency of Individual Violent Driving Behaviours(Hennessy, Ph. D dissertation) BehaviourFrequency Chasing another driver/vehicle 40% (58) Verbal roadside confrontation 23% (33) Vandalizing another vehicle 14% (20) Throwing objects at another vehicle 11% (16) Physical roadside confrontation 7% (10) Purposeful contact with another vehicle 4% (6) Drive-by shootings 1% (2)