Why Highways are Good Laboratories

2. 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 the same drivers • Multiple stressors present in highway driving • Certain behaviours (e.g., vengeance) may not be seen off the road • Highways are ubiquitous and part of our environment

3. Why not more research on driving behaviour? • Funding difficulties: too applied for psychological funding agencies and too academic for road safety professionals • Lack of funding for out-of-province researchers by transportation ministries • Road safety professionals are mostly engineers and tend to view problems as attributable to technical reasons and see engineering solutions to problems

4. 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

5. Why study behaviour on roadways? • Highways permit the study of multiple stressors (e.g., heat, noise, crowding, vibration, etc.) • The automobile is both a weapon and means of escape, facilitating aggressive and violent behaviours • Behaviours that are unusual or not easily studied may be apparent in the highway environment (e.g., vengeance)

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

7. 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

8. 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%).

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)