PSY 409a Driving Psychology Generation 20
My previous research, Report 2 is about creating my own experiment to modify an aggressive driver's attitude.
The purpose of the report 2 is to discover the effective method to modify the behaviors of aggressive drivers. In order to do so, I used the rubber band technique and cognitive behavioral writing assignment to overcome with my driver's aggressive behavior. In my experiment case, I found out that the cognitive behavioral writing assignment was more effective than the rubber band technique for my driver. Just like my experiments, Generation 20 students in PSY 409a class tried different technique and found out the result of their experiments. By involving in a project like this, I believe the Driving Psychology is getting gradually closer to find the most effective way to change the aggressive attitudes of drivers in this world.
The purpose of report 3 is to think about effective driving education that benefits throughout the life span. By recognizing the problems in each life stage, I can analyze what kind of education is important for certain stage. By evaluating today's driving education, I can consider the alternative solutions to improve the lifelong driver's education in the future.
The Chapter 9, Lifelong Driver Education from Road Rage and Aggressive Driving focus on driving problems occurring throughout the life span. In addition to discussing these problems, the chapter provides possible solutions such as QDC, K-12 curriculum, and special driving class for senior drivers.
2.1 Teenagers at risk
In the first section of the chapter, Teenagers at Risk (p 190-193), discusses about the problems occurring among teenage drivers, especially, sixteen year-old. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "a sixteen-year-old drivers is 42 percent more likely to be involved in a crash than a seventeen-year-old, who has just one additional year of driving experience." This indicates that the younger teenagers are more likely to involved in car crash because they lack in driving experience. Because this lack in experience is the reason for car crashes, many states and countries now instituted a graduated licensing approach. This approach has several stage before teenagers can achieve the driver's license and the stage consist of learner's permit stage, intermediate or provisional license stage, and the final full license stage. In addition to this approach this section also discusses about the importance of parent's involvement for the teenage drivers. The example includes supervising teen's driving time, insisting teens to wear seat belts, and being a good model as a driver.
Driver-zed program was created by the AAA foundation for Traffic Safety. This program was developed to help teenagers because teenager, especially 16-year-olds are more likely to involve in aggressive behaviors that will cause car accidents. This Driver-Zed program involves CD-Rom Programs, which focuses on risk management.
In order reduce the aggressive driving attitude, Dr. John Larson states the importance in eliminating five alternative beliefs which is related to the aggressive driving behavior. These five alternative beliefs include thinking about revenge and punishment, being competitive, and speeding due to peer pressure. He also suggest to create more positive society where supportive attitude is the cultural norm. At last, this section of the book emphasize the importance of the motivation and responsibility of the drivers.
2.3 Driving Psychology Curriculum
The federal government is now more aware of aggressive driving problems. In order to improve these problems, the government is planning to provide driving psychology classes in school from elementary to high school. Since driving behaviors are complied of three parts which are affective self, cognitive self, and sensorimotor self, the purpose of the curriculum is to help kids to become competent in all of these three areas. In order to achieve this goal, Driving psychology should starts from kindergarten and elementary school where they can teach kids the affective driving skills. After this, kids can take the cognitive driving skills class in middle school. Finally, the teens can take the driving classes that focused n sensorimotor driving skills.
2.4 Post Licensing: The QDC Approach
The QDC stands for Quality Driving Circles. The QDC is the small organization composed of two to ten drivers where they meet every week to discuss how to improve their driving attitude. Unlike doing it by himself/herself, engaging in the activity like this will motivate you better. QDC also provides rewards for a person who improved his driving skills. The QDC helps the member to do the time log, voice recording, diaries, and other systematic diving record on a long-term bases. This also provide the person to discuss about driving problems with other drivers with similar problems. Because they work together, it seems to be more effective than trying to correct the aggressive behavior by himself/herself. QDC also helps the driver to be a supportive driver.
2.5 RoadRageous Video Course
RoadRageous video course was created by well-known road rage therapist Dr.Arnold Nerenberg and well-known driving psychologist Dr. Leon James. This course is the first driver education program to teach about the behavioral self-modification techniques. In addition to explaining the importance of supportive attitude, the RoadRageous Video course teaches how to solve problems and control emotional territory on the road with a sense of community. This course has three stages. In first stage, a driver will learn to learn new driving skills. This skills will start with easy one and progress into harder one. After the driver becomes competent in this stage, he will moves to the next stage where he learns to thinks analytically while driving. In this stage, driver will focus on improving his cognitive self by making correct decision such as deciding to stop at the yellow light. Finally, in the third stage, he will do follow-up exercises and activities which are useful in daily driving.
2.6 Older Drivers at Risk
This section of the book talks about the problems among senior drivers. Because their sensorimotor ability decline with age, the senior drivers engage in risky driving behavior. For example, a senior driver who has night vision loss has a hard time driving at night. Another example is an older woman who is incapable of driving faster than a speed limit. This sounds good but Hawaii's speed limit is 25mph, which can be too slow for other people. Because of this, the AAA (American Automobile Association) and other driver's organizations are providing the special driving classes for the seniors. To avoid senior drivers from risks, the government plans to pass legislation which requires the senior to exam their driving ability every three years. As I discussed earlier, everyone including senior drivers need to learn to be a supportive drivers with positive thinking in this society.
" In response to the appalling statistics and the mounting concern over teen drivers, many states and some countries have instituted a graduated licensing approach that provides for several licensing phases: learner's permit, intermediate or provisional license, and then full license (p.191)."
I believe this approach is very effective in reducing the numbers of accidents in the teenagers. Since teenagers do not have enough driving experience, it is important to provide classes that would give them enough driving experiences.
"In addition to teaching their kids to drive skillfully and appropriately, parents can take steps to help prevent or reduce the number of crashes involving teen drivers (p.192)."
I agree to this passage because a child's major source for drive learning is by parents. No matter how wonderful the school's driving education is, if a child's parents are aggressive drivers, the child will be end up driving like his parents. I believe the parents should be a good model to their child so he/she will be in good driving environment. I think it is very important for parents to drive supportively in front of kids, because I learned in my psychology class that the children are more likely to imitate bad behaviors than good behaviors. This means that parents should teach good behaviors to the kids, so kids will as least not to imitate the bad behaviors.
"One time one of the ladies yelled at me in the parking lot, 'you've got all day but I haven't.' I guess what she thinks is we're just a bunch of old fogies."
Discrimination against senior drivers is one of the many characteristics in aggressive driving attitude. This not only hurt the senior driver's feeling, but also impairs his/her self-esteem, which may result in reduced driving ability in the senior driver.
3. Class Discussions and lecture notes
3.1 Gender Differences in Driving Norms (Reference #9)
Presenter: Jacqueline Hurd
Date: February 23, 2004
a. Who is more aggressive driver? (Men or Women?)
Hurd discussed about gender differences in driving. I often hear that the men are more aggressive drivers than women. From my neurobehavioral psychology class, I know that the male hormone, testosterone do play a role in allowing a man to be aggressive. However, is this enough to support the idea that the men drives more aggressively? Even though women have less testosterone level in her body there are many women who drive aggressively like man. I believe there are things that can't be proven by only biology. However, I do believe that in general, men do drive more aggressively based on my environment especially looking at my father and my boyfriend. I agree with Hurd when he recommended anger management as a solution for aggressive drivers. Based on my experience, breathing technique works the best for my boyfriend.
b. Norms, Stereotypes, and What happens When They are Used?
In this section Hurd stated that when norms and stereotypes are constantly being referred to certain people, these people begin to believe in these stereotypes and even act in expected way. I do believe he has a point in his statement. If a society perceive certain people in a certain way, these people will begin to act like they expect them to act. For example, women were brought up to be more passive and subordinate. Because of these norms, they behave the way they are now. This norm can also applied to the concept of woman's driving. Because women are stereotypically believed to drive worse than men, they unconsciously take this statements into their head and end up driving this way. I believe women will have more confident and drive better if the society begins to have positive views about women.
c. Feminine and Masculine Driving.
In today's society, feminine driving style is seen as being safe while masculine driving is seen as requiring control. The society has stereotype that the masculine driving is bad while feminine driving is good. However, I do not agree with this idea. I believe each driving has positive and negative parts. For an example, good part of feminine driving is safe and more supportive. However, feminine driving has negative parts, too. I believe feminine driving lack in right decision making. It is usually female who engage in ambiguous driving. This include a woman who do not know what to do in a crowded parking lot. On the other hand, I believe men are better at deciding things quickly. For example, if there is some accidents and he has to use other roads, he can quickly judge what to do and where to go. I also believe they are better at doing parking such as parallel parking. It seems that men takes fewer time than women for parking. So, I believe it is best to teach both positive feminine and masculine driving style in a driving class in the future.
d. Does sex really matter in driving?
The study tries to find who is better at driving, men or women? However, not a single study can actually find the exact answer for this because there will always be exceptions. Some people say men drive better while other people say women drive better. I believe this is pathetic argument because finding the answer for this does not do anything for the society. In fact, it can get worse because it can create more stereotypes. So I believe the sex does not really matter in driving. The important thing is to teach both men and women to be competent in affective self, cognitive self, and sensorimotor self. As long as they mastered these threefold self, anyone can become a supportive driver.
3.2 Chapter 5: Emotional Intelligence for Drivers from Road Rage and Aggressive Drivers by Dr. Leon James & Dr. Diane Nahl
Presenter: Eleanor Samuel
Date: March 1, 2004
a. Inner Power Tools (p.111)
According to Samuel, inner power tools are techniques that are used to help in restructuring and reevaluating a driver's assessment of a situation on the road. These techniques include breathing deeply when faced with aggressive drivers that angers you and think positively while making animal sounds. Even though these techniques seem to work in certain people, it did not work on my boyfriend. The worst technique for my boyfriend was when I asked him to come out with positive thought about the hostile drivers around him. One time, there was a car that was driving very slowly in front of my boyfriend. Just as expected, he started to complain, "What the hell is he doing? Is he stupid?" So I told him to think positive things about the driver. Instead of saying good things about him, my boyfriend started to say worse things like "Maybe he is mentally retarded. Maybe he is a fag. Maybe he can't read the speed limit." Eventually he ended at yelling at him again. I would not ask him to do this again! On the other hand, the breathing technique was more effective. In the beginning, he was making fun of this, but he started to calm down after while. I think this is because breathing technique can distract him from focusing on external issue.
b. Overcoming Emotional Hijacking (p.112)
The idea of emotional hijacking comes from strong anger taking over the whole brain functioning so a person become incapable of thinking positively can't become a supportive driver anymore. For example, when someone yells at you when you are driving, it is hard to stay calm. This make you want to yell back at him. In order to avoid this to happen Samuel suggests to teach how to reappraise a situation and look for alternative explanations, how to self regulate negative mood shifts, and how to emphasize with the other side. Even though it will be great if a person can do this, it is extremely difficult if someone cuts you off or yell at you for small reasons. I believe it is almost impossible to disengage from emotion when involved with aggressive drivers. So instead of teaching a person to stay calm when attacked by aggressive drivers, I believe it is first important to get rid of aggressive drivers. In order to do so, I think it needs law enforcement power. They should include every little aggressive behavior as crime and send aggressive drivers to jail right away with big punishment fees. Even a small aggressive behavior like cutting someone off should be included as crime that result in one year in Jail with at least $ 1000 fines. I believe strong force is needed to create supportive driving community. In order to do this even a little aggressive behavior such as failing to blink should be a big crime, so people will be more aware and afraid of aggressive behaviors. If there is no aggressive driver on the road, no one will be hijacked by angry emotions.
c. Three Levels of Emotional Intelligence (p. 117)
This section talks about three types of driving that include oppositional, defensive, and supportive driving. According to Samuel's presentation, oppositional driving has irrational thought which result in selfish and reckless driving. Defensive driving has logical thoughts, but a person is still suspicious and competitive, and complains about other drivers still. Samuel states that the supportive driving is the highest emotional intelligence a person can achieve. In the supportive driving level, a driver is prosocial which result in helpful and friendly driving. In addition, the driver is not affected by any hostile drivers because the driver only thinks to drive safely that benefits the community.
Personally, I believe my mother is a supportive driver. When she was teaching me how to drive, she always told me, "If there is a person who honk or yell at you, let them. Minding every single driver will drive you crazy. Just simply ignore them and concentrate on driving safely to get to the destination." I believe becoming supportive driver is very important and it benefits you and people around you. It will be great if you do not have to mind every single complaint from aggressive drivers. No matter what they say to you, your emotions will never be affected by other people. I believe this is important not only in driving, but on daily life. You can't focus on every criticism and get depressed or angry. Instead, you have to turn criticism into something positive and get happy.
d. Shrinking Your Emotional Territory (p.122)
This part of the presentation is similar to the concept of pervious section. Shrinking your emotional territory means to reduce the environmental factors that worries, angers, or depresses you. You have to put limits in things that you worry about. Larger the emotional territory, larger the numbers of stresses you will have. I truly believe in this concept. Even though it is hard sometimes, shrinking your emotional territory is the key to escape from anger and irritation. It is you who is making it as an angry situations, not the aggressive drivers. Why do you have to ruin your day because of this one guy? The best thing you can do is to not let him invade in your emotional territory. When someone yells or cut you off, it's not like you are going to die. Then why do you care about it? Let them cut you off. What's so bad about it? Let them yell at you! Who cares? You do not have to care about these people at all. You are better than that!
3.3 Chapter 6: 3-Step Driver Self-Improvement Program from Road Rage and Aggressive Drivers by Dr. Leon James & Dr.Diane Nahl.
Presenter: Chris Concepcion
Date: March 8, 2004
a. A-Acknowledge (p. 135)
Concepcion states that the first step to modify your aggressive behavior is to acknowledge or recognize your bad behavior. Problem in this step is people usually fail to recognize their fault due to self-serving bias. Everyone believe they are above average and no one wants to admit that they did something wrong.
I have to disagree with this concept. I believe it is fairly easy to realize that you are doing something wrong. Look at millions of smokers today. They know smoking is bad, but most of them cannot quit smoking. Look at millions of drivers who are going on yellow light. They know they are doing something that is against the law, but they still do it. I think most of them know what's right and what's wrong. However, it's hard to change their bad behavior. I believe these drivers need cognitive behavioral therapy in order to modify their behavior.
b. W-Witness (p. 137)
Concepcion than introduce the classmates about the second step to improve the driving attitude, which is to verbalize the thought and feelings to better understand your reaction to a given situation. In order to self-witness your driving habits, Concepcion introduces several techniques that can be used in the driver's education including tape recorder, writing notes, and getting a passenger who can tell you the aggressive behavior.
I believe verbalizing your thoughts and feelings is effective in witnessing your bad behavior. However, the problem is aggressive drivers do verbalize their feeling by saying, "you jerk! What the hell are you doing?" However, these people do not seem to be witnessing their aggressive behavior. In fact, some research shows that verbalizing the person's anger thoughts can make him more angry. I think this is why you need a tape recorder where you can review your driving behavior after. However, I believe the problem of tape recording and diary is that it is time consuming and hard to do it on regular bases.
c. M-Modify (p.143)
The final step of the Self-improvement program is to modify one's behavior from a negative to a positive outlook. In order to do so, you need to come up with positive thoughts that disprove your negative statements and become objective. The example of this will be saying "Maybe the driver had a bad day," instead of saying "why the heck are you yelling at me? Asshole!"
I believe changing your negative thoughts into positive is a wonderful strategy when you are encountered with aggressive drivers. However, it is sometimes very difficult to come up with positive thoughts when you are dealing with the aggressive drivers. Even though it is best to come up with the positive thoughts about the driver, I also think a person should stand up for your right when the aggressive driver was wrong because the aggressive driver also should learn to recognize their wrongs. For example, if someone hit your car and escaped, do you have to let him go? You cannot just come up with positive thoughts and see the aggressive driver as a good person. No! You have to stand up for your right. This does not mean you will get mad and yell at him, but let him know his wrong behavior so he will learn to at least recognize his wrongs.
d. Resistance to Change (p.144)
Even though the society is more aware of the road rage, there are still many factors that prevent people from modifying their aggressive behaviors. Concepcion believes that this is partly because America values the idea of the freedom of the speech. This idea promotes people to speak up for your rights. Because of this, some people have a hard time following the idea of the supportive drivers.
I truly agree with this concept. Just as I mentioned before, I also am affected by this idea. I believe I should sometimes stand up for my right because people will walk all over me if I don't and take advantage of me. However, I can't always talk back when it comes to driving because they can take away my life. The textbook shows many examples of death caused by the road rage. In order to protect my life, I sometimes have to force myself to disengage from my emotions because I do not want to end up in heaven at my age.
3.4 Chapter 9: Lifelong Driver's Education from Road Rage and Aggressive Driving by Dr. Leon James & Dr. Diane Nahl.
a. Teenagers at Risk (p. 190-p.193)
"According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a sixteen-year-old driver is 42 percent more likely to be involved in a crash than a seventeen-year-old, who has just one additional year of driving experience (p.190)."
I believe discussing about driving problems among teenagers is very important because as the quote above shows, teenagers are more likely to involve in car accidents than adults. It seems that major reason for this is because teenagers lack in experience and fall under the peer pressure. Since it is important to reduce the number of car accidents in this society, it is important to focus on age group which has high car accident rate. By instituting a graduated licensing approach and parental involvement, I hope the number of accidents by teenagers will decline in the future.
b. Driving Psychology Curriculum (p.195-p.199)
I truly believe it is important to discuss about driving psychology curriculum because this curriculum is important step to change the negative cultural norm into the positive one. If the government becomes successful in providing k-12 curriculum to the whole states, it is possible to bring a supportive driving community where car accident will be virtually nonexistent. Because key feature in becoming a supportive driver is to be competent in threefold self which consist of affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor self, providing driving psychology class from kindergarten is important. In order to modify the aggressive driving attitude, it is too late to start from teenagers sometimes. It is important to put the supportive driving concept from the infancy so he/she will never even think about aggressive ideas.
c. Post Licensing: The QDC Approach (p.199-p.202)
I believe the QDC approach is interesting and unique approach. Instead of just teaching the drivers about the driving skills, QDC provide a driver a opportunity to meet with other drivers who are dealing with similar driving problems. Because the driver can realize he is not the only one with his problems, he feels stronger and be more motivated to change his behavior. Working together with other drivers provide many benefits. For example, the drivers will be motivated to involve in self-monitoring technique because they can compare the result with other drivers. Because QDC is effective, it is important to talk about this in the book to bring awareness about the QDC.
d. Older Drivers at Risk (p.207-p.212)
I believe talking about senior drivers are very important part of the lifelong driver education because anyone will eventually become old and have to deal with disability due to aging. In addition, it seems that today's society carries stereotypes about senior drivers. For example, senior drivers are believed to be too slow and irritate other drivers. Because younger generation seems to look down on senior drivers, it is important to bring the awareness and rights of the senior people. The society has to realize that senior drivers have reduced self-esteem and lack confidence partly due to the society's stereotypes about senior driving. On the other hand, the senior drivers do have physical disability due to aging. I believe government should provide special driving education for senior drivers and require them to have driving exam to check if they are still capable of driving. People have to support these drivers so they will enjoy their driving life for the rest of their life.
4. My Proposal for Lifelong Driver Education
4.1 Infancy (0-3)
According to the Dr. Leon James's article, Aggressive Driving is Emotionally Impaired Driving, "Aggressiveness, rage and anger reactions are commonplace on the road because they are learned habits, acquired by children in the backseat, where kids are not merely passive passengers." This quote helps me to recognize the importance in educating the kids from early stage about the driving education. As Dr. James writes in the article, aggressive driving is a "cultural habit" that develops from early through socialization with parents, T.V programs, and friends. In order to prevent kids from developing aggressive driving behavior, the parents need to become good driving models in front of their kids. If the kids are exposed to their parents' supportive driving style from early childhood, kids will be more likely to become supportive drivers in the future.
4.2 Kindergarten (4-6)
By the time kids enter kindergarten, the government can provide them with K-12 driving curriculum. During this stage, kids can focus on affective driving skills. Since they are too young to learn about driving, the teachers can teach them what is the right attitude as a passenger, pedestrians, and the road users. In order to teach kids what is the right behavior, the teachers can show kid's T.V shows where famous characters are behaving badly. By showing these, the teachers can discuss what's wrong with their driving behaviors. Moreover, the teachers can give kids homework to write about famous cartoon characters behaving badly on T.V. By doing such homework, kids can discuss about aggressive driving behaviors with their parents at home. Example of such writing assignment is shown in Dr. Leon James's article, Drivers Behaving Badly on T.V, where the evaluation activity sheet for drivers Behaving Badly is shown. For example, they evaluate Power Ranger's aggressive driving behaviors including speeding too fast, cars driving over the trees and flying over everything.
4.3 Elementary school (7-12)
In elementary school, the students can study more about affective driving skills. The students can learn the consequences of the stress that leads to the health problems in the future. In order to prevent the students to feel stress, the teachers can teach them how to perceive world as positive. I believe the school can train the students to come up with positive feelings when they are stressed out as a passenger, pedestrians, and road users. The students can practice the self-witnessing strategy to assess about themselves. In order to do so, they can write diary, time log, and evaluations about themselves.
4.4 Middle school (13-14)
During the middle school period, the students can work on their cognitive skills. In order to train them on their cognitive skills, teachers can give them problem solving assignments. The teachers also should teach the students about supportive driving attitude. The students can come up with several pro social driving habit that benefits the society.
4.5 High school (15-18)
Since teenagers are more likely to involve in car accidents, I believe the government increase the age for getting the driver's license. I personally believe they should be at least 18 to get driver's license. As the textbook indicates, high school should focus on sensorimotor skills. In order to make students competent in sensorimotor skills, the students should drive with driving teachers for many times. By doing so, they can get more experiences. I also believe graduated licensing is effective as I explained earlier.
4.6 Adulthood (19-60)
Even after the drivers have their driver's license, it is important to continue to involve in driver's education. For example, QDC should be effective in lifelong driver's education. In QDC, each member can observe their behavior by tape recorder, time log, and diary. Every week they can bring the results to the QDC class and discuss about the problems. They can also provide reward for the drivers who could control their emotions. Because they can share their driving problems with other people, they will have motivation to continue their involvement in QDC.
In addition to QDC, the drivers can go to counseling services including anger management therapy. There, the drivers can learn breathing technique to calm themselves when they are in stressful situation.
4.7 Late adulthood (60 and above)
Since driving ability decline with age, senior drivers face various risks on the road. For example, night vision loss makes them harder to drive at night. The body movement also gets worse as they age which slows down their sensorimotor skills. Moreover, health problems such as heart problems and Alzheimer can impair their ability. In order to prevent them from getting into car accidents due to these reasons, the senior drivers should go through physical examination every three years before they renew their permit.
Another concern is senior drivers sometimes lose their confidence in their driving skills due to their stereotypes created by younger people. The senior drivers sometimes become afraid of driving on the road because younger people look down on them. In order to protect their self-esteem, the government should provide senior drivers the special driver's education class where they can learn how to cope with anxiety, multi-tasking and other driving skills (Chapter 9 in our textbook).
In order to implement this life-long plan such as K-12 curriculum, the government's help is strongly needed. The law enforcement should also raise the age for the driver's license because 15 is too young to manage the driving task. The media's help is needed to call for the importance of supportive driving attitude. Lastly, the parents also should participate to shape their kids to have supportive driving styles.
This assignment helped me to identify social and cultural driving attitudes in our society. Unfortunately, our culture has negative views about certain drivers. In order to turn this society into more respectful, positive society, it is useful to spread the idea of supportive driving in this society. I believe a first step to spread this idea is to take driving psychology class and create website like this, so people can check them regularly. It is useful to learn about driving psychology because I can apply this concept to the daily life. Even though I believe I was already a supportive driver, I became more aware of this concept after I took this class. I am glad that I learned some techniques to improve my supportive driving. In addition, I also recognized my faults that should be changed in the future. I predict that the driving behavior in our society will move toward more positive, supportive behavior. I believe so because people are becoming more aware of driving problems and see some efforts to change these bad cultural habits. One of the examples is our driving class. By putting up many websites about driving behaviors, I hope this will help to improve the cultural norms about the driving.
6. Future Generation
For the future generation, I recommend you to write the report from a week in advance, so you do not have to struggle right before the dead line. In the presentation, you should explain with your own words instead of reading the notes because Dr. James grade strictly on this part. I think you will enjoy the class discussion because you can share many driving incidents with your classmates. For me, discussing about supportive driving was fun. Many of my classmates were complaining how hard to drive to benefits the community. I enjoyed listening to those difficulties. Overall I strongly recommend you to take this class because you will learn a lot!