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I have visited your website and was impressed. I do have some question relating to the sensorimotor domain. There does not seem to be any reference to recent work of Merleau-Ponty and Dreyfus in regards to a human's four stages of physical skill learning. The whole area of the fourth stage that relates to unconscious competence seems to suggest that we as humans in mastering a new skill arrive at this fourth stage and drive unconsciously.

It is interesting that you say emotionally impaired because there is a need to look at how we express ourselves emotionally and how we deal with and determine our emotional reactions. This is something not really considered a great deal. Emotions are important but we often don't consider how we construct them and recreate them and we have this tendnecy to think that certain acts (by others) naturally result in certain kinds of emotions - so they get justified. It is a very interesting area ot explore.

This is a model I have thought about in regard to driving and clearly there do seem to be some things we can do with unconscious competence - change gears, steer, brake etc but there are also many where we need to move into, and others where we need to remain, alert in a conscious sense. This is where I think Ellen Langer's notion of mindfulness is most useful.

The notion of emotionally impaired driving is a fascinating area to explore. It is refreshing to find research focusing on driving styles promoting teamwork and co-operation as a solution to aggressive driving. I agree with James and Nahl in stressing the importance of mutual support rather than mutual antagonism as a solution to aggressive driving. Indeed, there is a high degree of co-ordination required among drivers to maintain road-user safety.

I’m surprised that this paper hasn’t been the target of much more discussion. It promises to tackle a challenge I have long believed in – the cultural context in which driving behaviors take place. What Dr. James and Dr. Nahl seem to be proposing is nothing less than a planned cultural evolution.

One aspect of the paper I feel somewhat uncomfortable with is the “primary affective norms” as “valuing territoriality, dominance and competition as a desirable driving style,” and “condoning intolerance of diversity,” “supporting retribution ethics,” etc.

I see drivers rather as having normal instincts for territoriality and cooperation. For the most part, I think, drivers do pretty well, given their lack of training and the fact that most of what they learn is learned by osmosis from their environment. One can marvel at how well drivers perform in many situations as opposed to how badly.

But things are increasingly intense in traffic, due, I believe, to the cultural context, the mix of traffic, pressure of modern life and the atmosphere of competitiveness that is obviously being fostered in auto advertising. What’s exciting is the possibility of helping drivers overcome the environmental negatives and promoting a more advanced culture of the roadway.

It would be interesting to see more reaction and input from educators.

Leon and Dianne,

This would have to be one of the most important works I have seen in recent years. Thank you also for expressing so eloquently the theoretical basis for a lot of the driver development techniques I have been using for the last 12 years. I use the term driver development to encompass both practical driver training and driver education.

I agree with your title that aggressive driving is emotionally impaired driving, but I’m not so sure the reverse is necessarily true. It seems strange to me to see underconfident drivers described as aggressive, although I do understand your reasoning for doing so. Certainly they can be just as much a hazard on the road as the overconfident ones. Perhaps your definition of aggressive driving is just a little too broad. Not that it matters too much anyway, because I think your concept of “emotionally impaired driving” is a much better way to look at the problem. I do hope other researchers take up the challenge.

I was interested in your description of the legislative solutions used in America. In New Zealand there has not been any attempt to try this method. But there again, our police have never hesitated to use criminal law in appropriate driving incidents. For example a recidivist drink driver was convicted of murder after a second fatal crash, and a youth that deliberately ran over his girlfriend’s lover was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.

For the last 12 months New Zealand has been using a programme called “Street Talk” within our graduated Licensing System. This uses interactive group training techniques tailored specifically for 15 to 25 year olds. Among other things we have them research the qualities of a safe driver and lead them to the conclusion that safe driving is more to do with their own beliefs, values, and attitudes than actual vehicle handling skills (although these are still important!). They then explore all the influences in their lives that have contributed to the development of those beliefs, values, and attitudes and identify those that they could change to improve their driving safety. In exploring these influences we take a holistic view of their total well being by considering the Physical, Social, Emotional, and Spiritual dimensions. We do not mean Spiritual in the religious sense, but more their personal belief structures, values, etc. We then train them in Reframing Techniques and the use of the Change Cycle (Procaska et al, 1992) to enable them to make successful behavioural changes. We explore the Human Risk Factors extensively and then examine the costs and benefits of both safe and risky behaviour so they gain an understanding of the motivational effects these have on their driving. They explore the concept of “Slippage” to understand how and why their behaviour deteriorates over time. The programme concludes with extended goal setting exercises and they then go out and monitor and record their performance against their own goals. The aim of the programme is to enhance driver self-management. It is too early to say what the long-term impact of this programme will be, but the results so far look very encouraging. I am the national training and quality assurance manager for the main agency operating this programme, so if you would like to know more about it please feel free to ask me.

Thanks for the opportunity to read and comment on your work.