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I find it very interesting that the number of convictions in Ontario has dropped significantly in the 1990's. I am sure most would agree the general publics driving habits as well as the professional drivers habits are deteriorating. Although the Provincial police conduct blitz's with the largest ever being conducted earlier this year. The courts continually fall behind and clear the courts backlog by throwing all traffic violations out. Is policing the solution to aggressive driving? No. it is only part of the solution. Courts must be able to cope with the number of charges laid by police.
The other part of the solution is education. But getting licensed drivers in a classroom is next to impossible. So lets use the seat belt as an example of how to change things. First change the laws. Educate though the media, and most important educate the young. How many times did we hear from the children in the back seat "you should have your seatbelt on daddy". Seat belts took ten years to be accepted, we can do it with aggressive driving but must attack all the areas.
Especially the young.

For Ernie.

Many years ago two graduate students looked at the very young and their method of transportation, the tricycle and the bicycle. What they found as these young chilren played with their tricycles and bicycles on roadways. Interestingly, the played such games they called 'crash', 'murder bike' and 'suicide'. The realization of the researchers was that the bike was two vehicles in one, a transportation vehicle, and a play vehicle. (It's interesting that our wives say you and I will be children all our lives.) They developed a K12 course that asked the children to recognize when and where the bicycle was to be used as a transportation vehicle, and when it was appropriate to use it as a play vehicle. Due to apparent systemic inertia and high cost it was never introduced in our Province. Yet it appears to be an excellent starting place for our children. It wouldn't be a bad idea if you and I did not play in traffic with our cars.
John

As moderator of the discussion on Mr. Lonero’s paper, “A preliminary heuristic model...”, I’d like to make a few suggestions.

Without limiting general discussion about aggressive driving, I’d like to see the discussion centred on the paper and particularly on the model illustrated in Figure 2. Since the word "aggression" derives from the Latin meaning to attack (further derived from going forward) , and is a motive, how can we get at the motives of drivers, when often all we have are their behaviours? To do this, do we interview drivers charged or convicted of traffic violations and criminal acts while driving? Is their behaviour, as reported by witnesses (including the attacked), sufficient to establish aggression? What further breakdown of the conviction information (Figure 1) would be useful for an analysis of aggressive (vs. other) driver actions?

Referring to Figure 2, for two of the three axes we can obtain evidence of the instrumentality and severity of outcome of an action (although this derives from eye witnesses and possibly the aggressing driver). What about the Drivers’ Motivation along the third axis? On the axis labelled “Drivers’ Behaviours” could “assertive behaviour” replace “aggressive driving behaviours” at the low end of the Instrumentality scale?

I hope that this will serve as a stimulus for further discussion on the topic of an heuristic model or taxonomy of aggressive behaviour in drivers.

I don't think the reduction in Ontario convictions can be primarily related to courts, since the vast majority of traffic tickets are paid out of court. Convictions are also down similarly in California. What does account for these reductions, and what are the implications driver behaviour, driver improvement systems, etc., are interesting questions indeed.

The seatbelt law analogy in Ernie's comment is apt, in the sense that belt use represents a successful "cultural" change, but it is also less than apt in a number of ways. For starters, seatbelt use is a clear and definable behaviour. As behaviour analysts, we need to be able to define the behaviour we want to change. Aggressive driving as a concept is more "apples and elephants", lacking a coherent definition. Aggressive driving seems to be whatever we are currently against in driver behaviour; it seems to be used where we could just as well say "bad driving" and seems at the moment to add little value in its own right. I once had a heated argument with a police accident investigator who was convinced that the actions of a crash-involved driver were "aggressive, hell bent for leather", when the driver in fact had simply entered an intersection on a green light at moderate speed & gotten hit by a fire truck which she could not have seen. We will not be able to do much about undesirable drivers until we specify what we want to change.

Also, Ernie, we spent over $1million 1975 dollars on public education and surveys before the seatbelt law was passed in Ontario, so passing the law did not come first by any means. Imagine finding a million now for any road safety initiative. Even after the law was in place it took another 10-15 years learn how to manage and maintain it to realize its full current value.

Bob's question about what to call aggressive is very much to the point & I'm not sure where to draw the line between "assertive" and aggressive, or even if a two-part breakdown is enough. Some "aggressive" acts, such as running a red light, are mobility enhancing but not "aggressive" to any particular other road user. Does not aggression in common parlance have to be directed at somebody?

Other "aggressive" acts, such as, say, pounding the brake when being tailgated, do nothing for mobility but certainly send a threat to another specific road user. Taking right of way when it is due may be assertive, and appropriate. Is assertive to aggressive a coherent scale of some sort? What about timid, passive, or too-cautious driver behavior?

Are we trying to make some sort of personality or "attitude" test out of aggressive driving? This morning as I was driving into town, a driver, without even slowing, ran the stop sign at the end of the 401 off-ramp to turn in ahead of me. She then proceeded into town at the posted speed (which is very rare in that location), finally coming almost to a complete stop before moving into a continous center left turn lane to go in for coffee and TimBits. Is this an aggressive driver or a very cautious one? Is the question a sensible one?

Larry

As a Volunteer Instructor of Senior Drivers, the biggest problem facing these drivers is the Aggressive tailgaters. How do you handle these tailgaters without causing more aggression. Hitting the brakes to make them back off just angers some. Slowing down to make them pass angers others. The whole point I am trying to bring out is that many aggressive drivers seem to be looking for a reason to become angry. Prior events in these drivers daily activities stir them up and instead of taking a brisk walk or going to the gym, they get behind the wheel and take it out on the other drivers.

Olly,

The actions you suggest as possible remedies to tailgating are pretty aggressive, at least hammering the brakes is. Following closely is now normal in many situations. Typical headways on urban freeways approach half a second. Old timers may be seeing aggression where none is intended, and then triggering some real aggressive reactions by their own reaction to the close headway. Everybody should be a bit more patient with old timers, of course, as there are getting to be so many of them around, and they may be slow for good reasons.
Maybe this would be one of those rare occasions where public education could be useful.

Olly,

There could be all kinds of possible reasons for tailgating that we know little about.

Some years ago, while researching tailgating for an article for Driver/Education newsletter (http://drivers.com/resources.html) I contacted a variety of experts on different aspects of driver behavior and asked for their theories about why drivers do it. The answers were very varied and ranged from “It’s aggression” (a police psychologist) to “following the moves of other traffic like a robot,” (a driver ed text book), absentmindedness, territoriality, perception problems and “drivers learn from repeated experience that it is safe to do it” (a traffic safety expert). It was obvious that very little, or no research had been done on why drivers tailgate, since none of the experts could cite any. There are probably a variety of reasons, but we have not asked drivers in a scientific way why they do it, or studied individual perceptions of it.

Aggression could mean anything from drivers imposing their own values on traffic relationships to an all-out physical assault. I’d like to know more about how the model in Figure 2 could be used to study and categorize behaviors. The driver who is tailgating may be absentminded, or trying to communicate his/her need for space to the driver ahead, or bullying, or something else. How do we find out?

I can’t see how records of convictions can help much. When a driver is convicted of speeding, for example, this may be considered aggressive behavior, but speeding tickets are frequently given to drivers who are speeding in isolation from traffic (because it’s easy). Of course we could still argue that it is aggressive in that the driver is typically driving well beyond the norms for traffic in that area and ignoring the normal rules of behavior.

This conference allows very important information.
I really hope it will open peoples eye to that kind of danger.
education on the effect of road rage is a key factor and must be sumitt to severe authority action including changes in the laws to protect people before they get hurt not after.

Jean-Pierre Bernier Formative/Coordinator
safety education by DDC

Larry,
I read your paper with great interest. I liked your model in figure 2, but I have to admit I am uncomfortable with the linking of “aggressive driving” behaviors and “(road) rage” behaviors in the same continuum i.e. Severity of Outcome. To me, the distinction between the two would be the difference between what might be called a “civil” offense and a “criminal” offense. What is the difference between the person who shoots another because they were cut off at an intersection and the one who shoots an employer when dismissed from a job? Murder is murder – the location in which it occurs is irrelevant. Any overt violence or threat of violence is antisocial behavior and must be dealt with by society in that context.

The defining essence of “rage” is that the person is out of control. Their behavior is irrational and their responses are totally disproportionate to any perceived grievance. The traffic environment is just one of many contexts where this behavior will be exhibited. To include it in the general term “aggressive driving” is to sanitize it – to downgrade its severity to that of “just another driving problem”.

I believe we should leave the criminal behavior to the criminologists to solve and focus our attention on the driving behaviors that are within our area of expertise. Where to set the boundary between the two is, of course, the tricky question. Wherever we place it there will always be some overlap between the two. I would like to suggest we define rage as those actions that are directed at a specific target and aggressive driving as those that are not. My reasoning is that rage is an inappropriate response to some perceived grievance. As such it has an external stimulus (even though the tendency to rage is an internal human risk factor). Aggressive driving, on the other hand, is a direct result of an internal human risk factor and does not require an external trigger to occur.

I am certain that in most cases the rage that occurred was the result of an escalation of what began as aggressive driving, but that does not mean that all aggressive drivers have the potential to rage. Therefore I fail to see how they can be considered to be contiguous. If you were to take up my suggestion it would not invalidate your model in figure 2. The result would be two parallel continuum with the label Severity of Outcome – one for criminal behavior and one for driving behavior.

I partially agree with Brian as far as Aggressive Driving and Road Rage being two separate issues but do believe that there is a point when aggressive driving behaviors lead to road rage. I've spent 25 years in Traffic Law Enforcement, am a certified Emergency Vehicle Operations Instructor, and also teach Defensive Driving classes.

Part of the problem we see is that todays society has become so fast paced that people don't or can't take the time they need to get from point A to point B without pushing their luck. As a result of one drivers aggressive actions whether it be speeding, tailgating, cutting off someone else, etc., the other driver is quite likely to get upset and take some type of retaliatory action. This can go back and forth until they are so focused on each others actions they forgot that there are others using the road too and it sometimes leads to crashes. Other times I have seen it lead to fights at service stations, rest areas,or along the road when the drivers confront each other.

Is there a difference between driving behavior and criminal behavior. Certainly there is to a point. When you cross the line and begin showing a high degree of negligence in your operation of a motor vehicle, it's no longer just driving behavior, it has now become criminal and should be dealt with in that manner and is.

Over the years that I've been in Law Enforcement, I have seen aggressive driving incidents increase at alarming rates. What was unseen or unheard of 25 years ago is becoming common place on our highways.

Who's to blame? Everyone of us is since we have allowed it to happen. You can blame the courts, law enforcement, educators and right on down the line. Has the number of traffic enforcement officers kept up proportionately with the number of vehicles on the highways? No, it would be impossible and would cost an astronomical figure if it did. Is more enforcement needed to curb Aggressive Driving before the incidents turn to Road Rage. Yes most definitely but first the enforcers need to be educated. The old adage, do as I say and not as I do just doesn't cut it.

Before I get to carried away and off the point any farther I'd like to say this.

Education not only in our youth but in our adult drivers is where we need to begin. We need to educate by example in our driving habits and techniques. If I drive sensibly, others will follow. If I drive like there's no tomorrow, others will follow that example too and there may not be.

When I teach our departments EVOC(Emergency Vehicle Operations Course) There are two words that I stress throughout. The two words are DUE REGARD. If people do not drive with due regard for the lives, and property of others, they have crossed the line I mentioned earlier and are liable for any consequences that occur and in most cases they are criminal in nature.

So there is a difference between Aggressive Driving and Road Rage but only to a certain point and at that point Aggressive Driving becomes Road Rage. From my experience of 25 years in Law Enforcement and watching the behavior of drivers, I think every person who drives aggressively has the potential for Road Rage. At that point, their actions are no longer driving behavior but have become criminal.