Traffic Psychology, Road Safety and Health David L. Wiesenthal

Traffic Psychology, Road Safety and Health

David L. Wiesenthal

The United Nations: Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020)

• “The Decade of Action for Road Safety can help all countries drive along the path to a more secure future…Today, partners around the world are releasing national or citywide plans for the Decade…Together, we can save millions of lives.”

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Road Safety Statistics

• 1.2 million die in road traffic crashes each year

• Approximately 50 million are injured or disabled by collisions each year

• Every day 3,500 die in a road crash

• Speed contributes to at least 30% of crashes and deaths

• For every 1 km/hr reduction in average speed, there’s a 2% reduction in crashes

World Health Organization (2005)

The United Nations has declared 2011-2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety


• 90% of road casulties are from developing countries

• 1.9 million road deaths forecast for 2020

• Traffic injuries are the #1 cause of death for young people worldwide

• Economic cost to developing countries approx. $100 billion/yr.

• By 2015, traffic injuries will be the leading health burden for children over 5 yrs.


• Unless action is taken, by 2020, traffic injuries are predicted to be the 3rd leading health issues ahead of malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDS

• Economic costs:

High income countries US$518 billion

• Low & middle income countries US$65 billion

Source: Peden, M. & Sminkey, L. (2004). World Health Organization dedicates World Health Day to road safety. Injury Prevention, 10, 67.

Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015

• In the last 3 years there’s been a 16% increase in vehicles on the world’s roads

• 2014: 67 million passenger cars on the road

• Road deaths/injuries in low and middle-income countries are estimated to cause economic losses of up to 5% of GDP

World Health Organization (2015). Global status report on road safety 2015. Geneva: World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2015/magnitude_web.pdf?ua=1

Motorcycle Deaths

• Motorcycle fatalities constitute 23% of all traffic deaths

• In the Americas, the proportion of motorcycle deaths increased from 15% to 20% between 2010 and 2013

• In South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, motorcyclists constitute 1/3 of all traffic deaths

Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015

• 105 countries have good seat belt laws that apply to all occupants

• 47 countries have good speed laws defining a national urban maximum speed limit of 50 km/h and empowering local authorities to further reduce speed limits

• 34 countries have good drink-driving laws with a BAC limit of </= 0.05 g/dl as well as lower limits of </= 0.02 g/dl for young and novice drivers

• 44 countries have helmet laws applied to all drivers & passengers with helmet stds.

• 53 countries have a child restraint law based on age, weight, or height and apply restrictions to children placed in the front seat

http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/roadsafety/TrafficCollisionStatisitcs_2011.pdf


• 1,834 fatal collisions with 2,006 fatalities (2011)

• 121,159 personal injury collisions (2011) with 10,443 serious injuries with a total of 166, 725 injuries

Transport Canada (2011)

Source: http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/roadsafety/TrafficCollisionStatisitcs_2011.pdf








Conceptualizing Driving

• Human-machine system• Social system• Human-environment system• Environment-vehicle system• Competitive activity• Recreational activity• Expressive activity• Instrumental activity

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, workload)• Perceptual processes• Wayfinding & route learning• Stress and coping

Issues for Psychology’s Involvement

• Alcohol/drug• Stress• Aggressive

driving/attributional processes

• Driver education• Driver

assessment/licencing• Sleep/fatigue• Young & Aging drivers• Media influences• Way-finding• Program evaluation• Vision/perceptual

processes

• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

• Anger management• Attention deficit

hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

• Rehabilitation programs• Stress reduction• Medical conditions &

fitness to drive• Distraction• Risk & risk perception• Development of

assessment tools• Cognitive processes with

informatics

Areas of Health-Related Investigation• Collision experience and Post-tramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Physiological indicators of driver stress

• Alcohol usage and driver performance

• Illicit & Over-the-Counter Drug usage and driver performance

• Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and driving performance

• Epidemiological studies of driver, passenger, and pedestrian injuries/fatalities

• Elderly drivers

• Sleep/fatigue and driver performance

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

• 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

What is traffic psychology?• Definition: the study of the behaviour of road users and

the psychological processes underlying that behaviour (Rothengatter, 1997).

• There is no single theoretical framework for the field, but rather several competing models, many of which are drawn from social psychology (e.g., Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour, driver stress, the General Aggression Model, risk compensation, personality theory etc.

• Glendon (2011) identified 174 theories, conceptual frameworks, or models with a psychological component in his review.

Source: Rothengatter, T. (1997). Psychological aspects of road user behavior. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46, 223-234.

Traffic Psychology’s Roots

• Ergonomics/human factors• Cognitive psychology• Clinical psychology• Social psychology• Personality psychology• Environmental psychology• Perceptual processes• Behavior modification• Epidemiology

Journals

• Accident Analysis and Prevention• Transportation Research, Part F• Journal of Safety Research• Human Factors• Ergonomics• Safety Science• Applied Ergonomics• Personality and Individual Differences• Work and Stress• Basic and Applied Social Psychology• Aggressive Behavior• Violence and Victims

Major Journals

• Accident Analysis & Prevention

• Journal of Applied Social Psychology

• Ergonomics

• Transportation Research. Part F, Traffic Psychology and Behaviour

• Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (CARSP)

• International Association of Applied Psychology (Division 13: Traffic and Transportation Psychology)

Professional Organizations

Traffic Psychology

Where is traffic psychology research performed?• 52 countries (representing 68% of the world’s

population published during a recent 11-year period

• USA• UK• Australia• The above countries produce 54% of publications with USA

accounting for one-third

Source: Glendon, A. I. (2011). Traffic psychology. In P. R. Martin, F. M. Cheung, M. C. Knowles, M. Kyrios, J. B. Overmier, & J. M. Prieto (Eds.), IAAP handbook of applied psychology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Where in the world is traffic psychology studied?

• The USA, UK & Australia contributed 53.7% of the publications reviewed

• The U.S.A. accounted for just over 1/3 of the total

• Adjusting for relative population, New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Israel, Australia, and Norway score highly on this index

• Using wealth (per capita income), the top performing countries are: USA, UK, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, & Israel

Source: Glendon, A. I. (2011). Traffic psychology. In P. R. Martin et al. (Eds.), IAAP Handbook of Applied Psychology, pp.545-558. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell (Wiley)

Traffic Psychology

Taking relative population into account, these countries research productivity is in this order:

1. New Zealand

2. Sweden

3. Finland

4. Israel

5. Australia

6. Norway


Traffic Psychology

These countries research productivity ranking follows:

7. Bahrain

15. Hong Kong

16. Singapore

17. Qatar

18. Kuwait

Larger developing countries perform poorly (China,

India, & Indonesia).


Traffic Psychology

With per capita income as the indexing criteria:

1. USA

2. UK

3. Australia

4. Sweden

5. New Zealand

6. Canada

7. Israel


Traffic Psychology

In a content analysis, Ian Glendon reviewed 1,472 empirical journal articles and chapters.


Traffic Psychology

Only 15% of the papers reviewed by Glendon (2011) had a theoretical model.

• Glendon reported 174 theories, conceptual frameworks, or models with some identifiable psychological component or origin.


Traffic Psychology: Methodology

The methodology employed was chiefly:

• Laboratory experiment

• Field experiment

• Quasi-experiment

• Cohort/epidemiology



542 tests & questionnaires152 driving specific measures such as:• Instruments measuring a single behavior (either

by observation or self-report)• Cognitive domain assessing knowledge,

attributions, perception, attitudes, etc.• Cognitive measures combined with behavioral

measures (cognitive/attributional measures—many driving questionnaires fall into this category)



Driving and personality measures (n = 13) chiefly had an emotional orientation (e.g., driving anger, aggression).


Our Research Topics

• Driver stress• Reduction of driver stress• Driver anger/aggression• Driver distraction• Attributional processes• Perceptions of objectionable roadway

behaviours• Risk-taking and evolutionary psychology• Narcissism• “Unjust World” perceptions• Music and risk-taking

Methodologies I’ve Used

• Laboratory experiment• Simulation of driving & cell phone use• Field experiment • Content analysis• Observational techniques• National survey• Questionnaire development• Cross-national research

Dependent Measures

• Speed estimation task• Implicit Attitudes Test• Vienna Risk-Taking Test Traffic (WBTV)• DriveSim• Animation• Questionnaires (modified as well as developed

measures• Cell phone administration of questionnaires

Driving Vengeance Questionnaire (DVQ)

• English• Mandarin• Hebrew• Portuguese• French• Italian• Australian English• Polish

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

Frequency of Individual Violent Driving Behaviours(Hennessy, Ph. D dissertation)

Behaviour Frequency

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)

Intervention Strategies

Suggestions for Reducing Stress & 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 self-selected music, books-on-tape in cars while driving– Use deep breathing exercises– Physical exercise

• Anger management– Screen all drivers– When a given demerit point level is reached, provide anger

management workshops

• Enforcement of Highway Traffic Act– Tailgating– Signaling of lane changes– Use of left lane as passing lane

Suggestions for Reducing Stress & 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

Safety/Health Promoting Interventions

• Mandated safety equipment in vehicles (ESC standard in 2011 Canadian automobiles)

• Graduated licencing• Improved driver training• Better designed highways/clear signage• Mandatory bicycle & motorcycle helmets

for all cyclists (not just children)

Aggressive Driving: Interventions

Technological Solutions:• Radar cameras recording licence plate data• Sending e-mail/texting to other drivers who registered

to receive these communications from other motorists

• Speed camera lotteries awarding cash prizes to those drivers recorded driving below the speed limit.

• Contacting police via cell phones• Signs in automobiles that communciate apologies for

driving errorsSource: Wiesenthal, D. L., Lustman, M., & Roseborough, J. (In press). Aggressive driving: Current perspectives in theory and research. In A. Smiley (Ed.), Human factors in traffic safety (3rd edition). Tucson, AZ: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Co.


Psychological Strategies• Cognitive behavior therapy for drivers diagnosed with

Intermittent Explosive Disorder (DSM) through court orders

• Feedback from passengers• Music listening• Deep breathing relaxation therapy

Source: Wiesenthal, D. L., Lustman, M., & Roseborough, J. (In press). Aggressive driving: Current perspectives in theory and research. In A. Smiley (Ed.), Human factors in traffic safety (3rd edition). Tucson, AZ: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Co.


Source: Wiesenthal, D. L., Lustman, M., & Roseborough, J. (In press). Aggressive driving: Current perspectives in theory and research. In A. Smiley (Ed.), Human factors in traffic safety (3rd edition). Tucson, AZ: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Co.

•Legislation aimed at specific offences (e.g., stunt driving, street racing, burnouts)

•Increased police apprehension of speeding, distracted drivers, drinking drivers, etc.

•Media campaigns against drinking driving, Australian pinky wiggling commercials, etc.

•Promotion of mass transportation.

•Prohibiting dangerous driving depictions in television commercials

Documents

Traffic Psychology, Road Safety and Health David L. Wiesenthal