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I wonder if you have missed the point somewhat.
Before I start perhaps I ought to say that I was taught to drive by a UK Police advanced driver, and have subsequently passed the UK Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) test, and further qualified as an IAM instructor. I have also taken and passed a UK Police advanced driving test. I believe I drive very well, although my wife says I am impatient. I acknowledge that my own driving style can be seen as aggressive, and I certainly have a low tolerance of other peoples bad driving. This never extends to physical or verbal violence towards others, but causes me great frustration.
However I believe that in your paper you place much emphasis on the individual's behaviour whilst not addressing the cause of that behaviour. The direct cause of my own impatience and stress is other drivers dithering and poor driving, which causes a 60 minute journey to take 90 minutes.
Now I am sure that you will say that I am at the 'I have done nothing wrong' stage. Naturally I dispute this. Every day I see drivers going to work with their rear windows misted - So how often to they use the rear view mirror? I see people who feel unsafe travelling faster than 40mph on open roads causing huge tailbacks (quite often the same drivers who do 40mph through towns), I see the following drivers too nervous to overtake therefore perpetuating the hold up, I see speed limits that are being extended further and further out of towns, I see 50mph speed limits and speed cameras in areas where it would seem perfectly safe to overtake at 60mph.
All of this leads to frustration.
I would say that you are trying to educate the wrong people. Would it not be better to tackle the cause of the problem, rather than the result?
Doctors who treat stress patients say that it is better to 'let it all out now and again, rather than keep it bottled up', and also that not letting it all out puts you at greater risk of a heart attack. You seem to be telling me that I should keep it all bottled up and telling the bad driver that its ok to drive badly, because you're educating me into not getting cross at his mistakes.
I totally agree that drivers who cause actual harm to others through road rage or any other cause, should be punished for their crimes. However you seem to be 'papering over the cracks', and lashing out at the easy victim, rather than tackling the poor driving that causes the problem.
I would be very keen to see your response.

Mark

Learning to drive in the UK, you may never have had the opportunity to view the excellent AAA Foundation film reconstructing an actual trip across Chicago between two drivers. These two drivers had to drive from one suburb down through the heart of the city through the loop and on out into the far suburb. Chicago of course is one of the large cities of the US. One driver was to told to go get there, and the other driver was instructed to observe all the rules and be kind to other motorists and pedestrians. Surprisingly at the end of the trip there was only a five minute difference in time. It seems there is a discrepancy between our internal speed and the external real world speed. Certainly there is a difference in perception. A few years later the Canadian Armed Forces wanted to test this out on the highways and freeways. On an eighteen hundred kilometer trip through Germany, again one driver was told to 'get there' and the other driver was cautioned to obey all speed limits and to pass only when absolutely necessary (?. At the end of the trip the harum-scarum driver finished first. The other driver finished a half hour later, suggesting that if one driver had stopped for a tea, they both would have arrived at the same time.

On a course I teach in Winnipeg, Canada about the internal speed of the driver, the driver is asked how fast he is going when he is in a jet plane doing 850 kph? The invariable answer to this trick question is 750 kph. Then it is pointed out that the person is not moving, only the plane is moving. They can obviously get up and walk around, and go to the bathroom. The same applies
when your police instructor has to drive to an emergency. He is not moving only the police car is moving.

You might consider the other research based solution to eliminating stress. Research showed that consciously relaxing every bit of your body was perhaps the best method.

You might also want to consider whether to make the choice of becoming a perfect driver. From the existing literature a 'perfect driver' is a driver who can drive to all conditions, at all times, with an imaginary cup of tea perched on the dashboard of his car without spilling a drop.

This is meant to be helpful and not a put down.
John

Mark,
There will always be what you consider inept drivers. There are less confident drivers, there are people who do not know where they are going because they have never been there before and there are people who've just heard some bad news and so on and so on. You would have it that only some people should be allowed on the road - people like you presumably but not everyone is like that. Poeple have different needs and interests and drive differently. We all have to learn to live with that and deal with impatience. It never will be as smooth as we expect or desire because others are out there!

One of the best performance measures for any behavioural treatment program is recidivism. Of the 52 participants treated in your program have any reoffended? Are you tracking their driving record to see if their safety record (i.e. collisions and violations) is improving?

Moderator

This is an extremely interesting paper. As an instructor I have experienced the negative attitudes of the typical traffic school participant. As an educator I am very interested in the process by which the psychological defense mechanisms of the violator are broken down.

Sarah makes a good point about the so-called inept drivers Mark refers to, but I also have some sympathy with Mark’s point of view. In any traffic incident there are usually two sides to the story and I strongly feel that we need to educate the public about the details of driving – about what is acceptable procedure and what is not. It seems to me that there is an epidemic of misunderstandings about roadway rights and what constitutes “proper” driving. As someone else pointed out at this conference, we teach very basic stuff in driver education programs (since it’s usually beginners taking them). We teach drivers to drive by the book, but that’s not the way the world works.

To the authors -- I’d like to know more about the reactions of the course participants to the “dismantlement of the psychological defense mechanisms” you mention. How much training would be required for program facilitators?

Mark makes the comment that the Belgian program was trying to "educate the wrong people." I notice that no one has commented on the fact that 85 percent of the people in that program were refered there for assault and battery.

Probably over 7,000 traffic violators have gone through my traffic school classroom and not a one has admitted to having had a physical, criminal altercation on the highway.

This seems like a different class of offender than what I usually encounter, but only in degree. The author writes that for the participants "reacting with violence is a natural and logical reaction to frustration and obstruction. The participants have no problem with it. For them it seems rather problematic when you don’t react with violence. A question we receive frequently is: ‘Have you never hit anyone?’"

I would like to see a much more intensive driver safety program instituted in California, to stem off the possibility of the majority of offenders asking why I haven't hit another driver.

Getting through the defense mechanisms. It seems very obvious to me that very little time is "saved" by speeding or grinding one's teeth impatiently. It also seems obvious that I have a far lesser chance of getting a traffic ticket (and having to shell out all that money) by driving by the rules, and that I, and those around me, are safer by following the rules.

But every so often I will have someone more or less call me a liar when I say I follow the rules of the road. That is a person who may not be reached even in a 40 hour program.

In California most drivers never have any driver education after taking their behind the wheel test to get the license. Renewal is most often automatic, and if a written test is required it takes 10 minutes to study the handbook to pass.

I don't think traffic problems and agressive drivng is going to become less problematic in the coming years. We'll see an increase in younger, attention-span-challenged drivers and an increase in baby-boomers reaching retirement age. These two groups on the road will present special challenges.

One would think our lawmakers and leaders would see great value in stepping up driver education, for all ages. Considering how much time we spend in our cars, and how important driving is, it would seem to make sense to begin educational programs that teach skills, responsibility, and consequences.

Hello,
I am co-leading an anger and stress management therapy group at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. Our participants are mostly referred to us by the courts for some type of aggressive interpersonal behavior. There is a manual in development outlining a basic structure for the group. While some are resistant to change, others seem to embrace the opportunity. It seems that this type of a group, where anger and stress in general are emphasized, would be a good adjunct to the program described in this paper. Of course, it may not be that all aggressive drivers have anger or stress management problems, but that is an empirical question. It is my goal to develop a comprehensive educational and behavior change program specifically for those who are identified as aggressive drivers here in the U.S. I find it encouraging that the Belgian government has seen fit to implement such a program aimed at increasing understanding and reducing dangerous driving behaviors. The problem needs to be addressed at many levels, and the individual level is one of the most important. Thanks to the site hosts for the opportunity to discuss this matter.
Sincerely,
Chris Dula (cdula@vt.edu)
Research Associate
Center for Applied Behavior Systems
Virginia Tech

Benedicte et al,
I think you are all very brave to attempt to work at the extreme edge of the problem. The work I do is at the exact opposite end if the continuum. Our "Street Talk" programme aims to enhance driver self management in 15 to 25 year olds to prevent the problem occurring in the first place. It will be interesting which programme has the greater long-term benefits.

I would be interested to know how many of your 52 participants had convictions for violent offenses that were not related to driving. Is this information available?

Thanks for sharing your work with us.