Index to Controversial Issues Debated

including these topics: 
Issues Part 1 -- Right Lane vs. Left Lane Feelings | Tailgating | Social Responsibility
Issues Part 2 -- Driving the Speed Limit | PSA Radio Spots | Car Phones | Automatic Pilot | DUI Counseling
Issues Part 3 -- Why I Tailgate | Coned Lane: When to Merge | Social Responsibility
Issues Part 4 -- Road Rage | Driver Education | Driving Personality | Stereotypes About Women Drivers
Issues Part 5 -- Merging When Lane is Coned | Continuing Driver Education
Issues Part 6 -- Good Drivers' Association | Slay Your Driving Dragon
Issues Part 7 -- What B.A.D. Drivers Do
Issues Part 8 -- Tailgating and Aloha Spirit Driving
Issues Part 14 -- Aggressive Drivers and Road Rage | New Name "Crashes" vs. "Accidents" |
Issues Part 15 -- Princess Diana: The Road Rage Incident of the Century: Day 1
Issues Part 26 -- Speed limits | DUI | Crosswalks |Traffic calming methods | .

Index to Controversial Issues Debated  ||  Search this Site

Drivers 'don't regret road rage'

Nearly two in three drivers have engaged in road rage in the last three years and nearly all thought their behaviour was justified, a poll shows.

More than 10% of motorists even admitted it could be good to be a bit aggressive on the road.

And nearly 60% of the road ragers said they had behaved badly after being annoyed by the poor driving of others, the survey from Zurich Insurance found.

From: The Press Association April 4, 2008.
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jAI4WQu3eiCA1bHjcqIESg7gHFCA 

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Best Driver in the World Blog: http://bestdriver.blogspot.com/ Check out the solutions.

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One In Six Have Been Road Rage Victims

4/19/2008

- And nearly 300,000 have had cars damaged in road rage incidents, says MoneyExpert.com

One in six drivers have been victims of road rage incidents in the past 12 months, new research from www.moneyexpert.com * shows.

More than 7.4 million motorists have been involved in confrontations with other drivers with younger drivers the most likely to be on the receiving end of other road users’ anger, the independent financial comparison website says.

The survey found that nearly 300,000 drivers had their cars damaged as a result of road rage confrontations – graphically illustrating the need for insurance. According to the RAC Foundation some ten per cent of drivers have been involved in an accident with an uninsured driver.

Several motor insurers such as Sainsbury’s Bank, which pays up to £1,000 compensation if drivers are assaulted, offer cover for road rage as part of their standard policies while others such as women-only insurer Sheila’s Wheels provide counselling services.

Sean Gardner of MoneyExpert.com, said: “Most of us will have lost our tempers while stuck in traffic and can sympathise with the sense of frustration felt by other drivers.

“But any sympathy goes out of the window for drivers who take out their anger on others. Shouting and swearing at other motorists is bad enough but damaging other drivers’ cars is beyond the pale.

“Our study did not thankfully find any evidence of physical assault but that is perhaps more down to luck than anything else. The fact that one in six of us has suffered from road rage is worrying. And of course many of us may be guilty of road rage ourselves.”

MoneyExpert.com estimates that around one in twenty fully comprehensive car insurance policies have a specific allowance for personal injury caused by road rage. However there are often exceptions and caveats, such as whether you caused the altercation and whether you are related to your assailant.

The most common form of road rage reported by motorists is tailgating – driving too close to another car – or other forms of aggressive driving. Around three-quarters of those who have suffered road rage in the past year were tailgated.

Half of the road rage incidents reported by motorists resulted in verbal confrontation while four per cent saw cars being damaged.

Around 16 per cent of motorists say they have suffered road rage in the past year – that rises to 19 per cent of 18 to 34-year-old motorists. Drivers aged 55 or over are least likely to be victims.

Drivers in the North of England are more likely to be road rage victims with 18 per cent reporting incidents while just 12 per cent of motorists in London have been victims.

From: http://www.webitpr.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=8303 

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The Effect of Age, Gender, and Type of Car Driven Across the States

by Dr. Leon James (2001)

http://www.drdriving.org/surveys/interpretations.htm

Summary:

The pattern of results thus far lead me to the following conclusions:

Aggressive driving is made up of a syndrome of habits that stick together
with plenty of individual variation.

Young drivers are more aggressive in all driving behaviors than older
drivers; senior drivers are the least aggressive.

Men are more aggressive than women when they drive sports cars and light
trucks (S-10, Pick-up, Ram, Ranger, F-150, Silverado, Dakota, etc.); women
are more aggressive than men when they drive SUVs and luxury cars. For
economy and family cars, it depends on the specific behavior.

There appear to be three psychological categories of vehicles people
drive: tough driving cars (sports, light trucks, SUVs), soft driving cars
(economy, family), and special driving cars (vans, luxury). Each of these
psychological categories has its own aggressive driving syndrome that
distinguishes it from the others.

It is evident that aggressive driving is a cultural norm that is generationally transmitted as a habit imbibed in childhood when riding with parents and reinforced by repeated media portrayals of drivers
behaving badly. To get us out of this, I propose a program of Lifelong Driver Education.

Eastbourne course will help women fight road rage

By Emily-Ann Elliott  6/6/2008

Women drivers are to be taught how to use everyday objects to defend themselves against road rage maniacs. (...)

Publicity material for the event on June 12 states: "As part of the course, volunteers from the audience will be invited to take part in role-play by a personal self-protection specialist and learn how to beat the bullies behind the wheel and, if diplomacy fails, how to use everyday objects normally found about one's person for self-protection and to ensure a rapid escape from a would-be attacker." (...)

Gail Taylor, marketing manager of Eastbourne Motoring Centre, said: "Personal safety and security are imperative for everyone, particularly women today. "The menace of aggressive, inconsiderate driving on our roads seems to be increasing at the moment and we believe that all it takes is a little care and consideration to avoid situations which can escalate into the kinds of tragic incidents we have all heard about recently. "We want women to enjoy their independence and freedom and be able to travel safely and confidently on our roads. "We hope that, by highlighting the risks facing women drivers, the course will provide them with a wealth of information and practical advice." (...)

From: http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/generalnews/display.var.2321526.0.eastbourne_course_will_
help_women_fight_road_rage.php

See also: Gender and Driving--Men vs. Women

Driving literacy facts that every driver needs to know!

by Dr. Leon James  6/08

World wide, about 1.5 million people are killed in road accidents every year -- that's 15 million killed on the roads every decade. Road accident research has pointed towards driver error in the majority of cases. In the U.S. about 42,000 traffic fatalities occur every year and about 1.5 million injuries annually at a total cost of 200 billion dollars -- that means in every decade we kill 420,000 Americans on the roads, injure 15 million Americans on the road, and pay a whopping two trillion dollar cost in repairs, injuries, insurance, and economic loss.  Our foreign oil dependence and domestic shortage would be solved if we stopped using the gas pedal emotionally in traffic every day.

Almost all of "driver error" can be traced to insufficient emotional intelligence training behind the wheel. All drivers can train themselves to acquire emotional intelligence behind the wheel. We have proposed that driver education start early in elementary school when we can train young people to acquire respect and compassion for others in public places -- pedestrians, drivers, passengers, road workers, law enforcement. We describe a threestep method for driver personality makeovers. Every individual is raised to be an aggressive driver and pedestrian through years of training on the back seat of the car driven by parents and other adults -- road rage nursery! Add up the years of daily television watching and video gaming involving drivers behaving aggressively, dangerously, and violently. By the time we start driving we automatically drive aggressively, have competitive feelings and intentions behind the wheel.

The threestep self-modification approach can provide adult drivers with a new supportive driver personality style, to replace the aggressive driving feelings, emotions, intentions, judgments, condemnations, and acts of risk and folly that all of us experience and tolerate on a daily basis. Driving is the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis, and it has the highest cost as well. We can change that.

Useful statistics

on car crashes and injuries may also be found on these Web sites:
www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov 
www.safecarguide.com/exp/statistics/statistics.htm
www.car-accidents.com/pages/stats.html www.transport-links.org/transport_links/filearea/publications/1_771_Pa3568.pdf

 Best solution for traffic woes? Eliminating the drivers

By Emily Mulhausen - Columbia News Service | Saturday, May 17, 2008

(...) The best way to eliminate congestion, some experts say, is to take the driver out of the driver's seat. "We wouldn't have to deal with people behind the wheel," said Dr. Jerry Schneider, a University of Washington professor emeritus of urban planning and civil engineering. "It would be a totally hands-off, brain-off experience."

Driverless design concepts include Personal Rapid Transit, which involves passenger taxi-pods on rails; automatic highway systems that direct driverless cars using magnetic guidelines; and dual-mode systems with cars that can be driven normally on smaller roads and for shorter distances, but could go driverless on specialized electric rails, or "guideways," for high-speed controlled travel.

"In the morning you would drop the kids off at school, drive to the guideway, sit back, read the paper, and automatically get off where you want to go," said Kirston Henderson, the president and inventor of MegaRail Transportation Systems, a dual-mode company based in Texas. (...)

Indeed, increased efficiency from higher speeds, standardized spacing between cars and driverless driving could dramatically increase road capacities. A normal highway lane can carry about 2,000 cars an hour, Schneider said, while a dual-mode "lane" could handle 15,000 or more. Traffic congestion is a "$78 billion annual drain on the U.S. economy in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel," says the Texas Transportation Institute in its 2007 Urban Mobility Report, with the average rush hour commuter losing $710 a year while stuck in traffic. (...)

But solutions that focus on the physical aspects of traffic may be overlooking the real problem.

"Congestion is often not caused by the road, but by the way drivers are driving," said Dr. Leon James, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii and a pioneer in the small field of traffic psychology. When one driver in traffic makes a mistake, tailgates, or changes lanes unnecessarily, hundreds of cars may have to suddenly put on the brakes.

"We call it a traffic wave," he said. "Everything suddenly slows to a crawl, but there's no obstruction."

That, in turn, has a psychological effect. "Congestion makes you feel frustrated and panicky," said James, who recommends a program of lifelong driver's education to help deal with the cognitive problems caused by driving. "Many people are driving around in a constant seething rage." (...)

From:  http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/05/19/lifeandtimes/
z3911e14ab4f1274b8825744a005df393.txt 

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See also a Web site on traffic waves.
Watch a a brief YouTube video called  Shockwave traffic jams recreated for first time

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Moffat: Violent Heart: Understanding Aggressive Individuals

Traffic accidents lead to approximately 40,000 deaths per year in the US. The world toll in 1999 was 1 million deaths and 40 million injuries In 2020, the worldwide death toll from traffic accidents is expected to rise to about 2.3 million Road accidents are the leading cause of death for males 15-44. Pedestrians and cyclists accounted for 19.3% of all traffic fatalities in the US and 13 Western European nations in 1992. of all crashes: 85% are attributed to road user error

Directory of Topics in Driving Informatics with Web Links