Home>Driving Courses>Conference Paper Handouts and Charts

Dr. Leon James, Professor of Psychology
Dr. Diane Nahl, Professor of Library and Information Science
University of Hawaii

Email: DrDriving@DrDriving.org
Web: DrDriving.org

Why Driving is Stressful Enter your search terms   Web DrDriving.org

The following list identifies 15 widely known conflicting aspects of driving that act as stressors. They are emotional challenges that are common occasions for expressing hostility and aggressiveness on roadways.

1. Immobility
   Most of the body during driving remains still and passive, not like walking where the entire body exerts effort and remains continuously active. Tension tends to build up when the body is physically restricted and constricted
2. Constriction
   Motor vehicles are restricted to narrow bands of highway and street lanes. In congested traffic, one's progress is inevitably going to be continuously blocked by numerous other cars. Being thwarted from going forward when you expect to, arouses the emotion of restriction and constriction, and along with it, anxiety and the desire to escape from the constriction. This anxiety and avoidance prompts drivers to perform risky or aggressive maneuvers that may result in mishaps.
3. Regulation
   Driving is a regulated activity, which means that government agencies and law enforcement officers get to tell drivers how fast to drive where, and how. Cars and trucks have powerful engines capable of going faster than what is allowed--ever. Drivers are punished for violating these regulations which they are responsible for knowing and obeying. This imposition, though lawful and necessary, arouses a rebellious streak in many people, which then allows them to regularly disregard whatever regulations seem wrong to them at the time or in the mood they are in.
4. Lack of control
   Traffic follows the laws that govern flow patterns like rivers, pipes, blood vessels, or streaming molecules. In congested traffic, the flow depends on the available spaces around the cars, as can be ascertained from the view of a traffic helicopter, or from a bridge above the highway. When one car slows down, hundreds of other cars behind run out of space and must tap their brakes to slow down or stop altogether, as in gridlock. No matter how one drives, it's not possible to beat the traffic waves, whose cause or origin starts miles from where we are. This lack of control over what happens is frustrating, stress producing, and tends to lead to venting one's anger on whoever is around--another driver, a passenger, pedestrian, construction worker, government officials.
5. Being put in danger
   Cars are loved by their owners and they are expensive to fix. Even a scratch is stress producing because it reduces the car's value and is expensive to repair. Congested traffic filled with impatient and aggressive drivers creates many hair-raising close calls and hostile incidents within a few minutes of each other. Physiological stress is thus produced, along with many negative emotions--fear, resentment, rage, helplessness, bad mood, and depression.
6. Territoriality
   The symbolic portrayal of the car has tied it to individual freedom and self-esteem, promoting a mental attitude of defensiveness and territoriality. Motorists consider the space inside the car as their castle and the space around the car as their territory. The result is that they repeatedly feel insulted or invaded while they drive, lulling them into a hostile mental state, even to warlike postures and aggressive reactions to routine incidents that are suddenly perceived as skirmishes, battles, or duels between drivers. For many motorists, driving has become a dreaded daily drudge, an emotional roller coaster difficult to contain and a source of danger and stress.
7. Diversity
   There are about 200 million licensed drivers in North America today, and they represent a diversity of drivers who vary in experience, knowledge, ability, style, and purpose for being on the road. These social differences reduce our sense of predictability because drivers with different ability and purpose don't behave according to the expected norms. The peace and confidence of motorists is shaken by events that are unexpected, and driving becomes more complex, more emotionally challenging. Diversity or plurality increases stress because it creates more unpredictability.
8. Multi-tasking
   The increase in dashboard complexity and in-car activities like eating, talking on the phone, checking voice e-mail, challenge people's ability to remain alert and focused behind the wheel. Drivers become more irritated at each other when their attention or alertness seems to be lacking due to multi-tasking behind the wheel. Multi-tasking without adequate training increases stress by dividing attention and reducing alertness.
9. Denying our mistakes
   Driving is typically done by automatic habits compiled over years, and this means that much of it is outside people's conscious awareness. Typically drivers tend to exaggerate their own "excellence," overlooking their many mistakes. When passengers complain or, when other drivers are endangered by these mistakes, there is a strong tendency to deny the mistakes and to see complaints as unwarranted. This denial allows drivers to feel self-righteous and indignant at others, enough to want to punish and retaliate, adding to the general hostility and stress level on highways.
10. Cynicism
    Many people have learned to drive under the supervision of parents and teachers who are critical and judgmental. We don’t just learn to manipulate the vehicle; we also acquire an over-critical mental attitude towards it. As children we're exposed to this constant judgmental behavior of our parents who drive us around. It's also reinforced in movies portraying drivers behaving badly. This culture of mutual cynicism among motorists promotes an active and negative emotional life behind the wheel. Negative emotions are stress producing.
11. Loss of objectivity
    Driving incidents are not neutral: there is always someone who is considered to be at fault. There is a natural tendency to want to attribute fault to others rather than to self. This self-serving bias even influences the memory of what happened, slanting the guilt away from self and laying it on others. Drivers lose objectivity and right judgment when a dispute comes up. Subjectivity increases stress by strengthening the feeling that one has been wronged.
12. Venting
    Part of our cultural heritage is the ability to vent anger by reciting all the details of another individual's objectionable behavior. The nature of venting is such that it increases by its own logic until it breaks out into overt hostility and even physical violence. It requires motivation and self-training to bring venting under control before it explodes into the open. Until it's brought under conscious control, venting is felt as an energizing "rush" and promotes aggressiveness and violence. Nevertheless, this seductive feeling is short-lived and is accompanied by a stream of anger-producing thoughts that impair our judgment and tempt us into rash and dangerous actions. Repeated venting takes its toll on the immune system and acts as physiological stress with injurious effects on the cardio-vascular system (Williams and Williams, 1993).
13. Unpredictability
    The street and highway create an environment of drama, danger, and uncertainty. In addition heat, noise and smells act as physiological stress and aggravate feelings of frustration and resentment. Competition, hostility, and rushing further intensify the negative emotions. The driving environment has become tedious, brutish, and dangerous, difficult to adjust to on the emotional plane.
14. Ambiguity
    Motorists don't have an accepted or official gestural communication language. There is no easy way of saying "Oops, I'm sorry!" as we do in a bank line. This allows for ambiguity to arise: "Did he just flip me off or was that an apology?" It would no doubt help if vehicles were equipped with an electronic display allowing drivers to flash pre-recorded messages. Lack of clear communication between motorists creates ambiguity, which contributes to stress.
15. Under-trained in emotional intelligence
    Traditionally, driver education was conceived as acquainting students with some general principles of safety, followed by a few hours of supervised hands-on experience behind the wheel, or on a driving simulator. Developing sound judgment and emotional self-control were not part of the training, even though these goals were mentioned as essential. Most drivers today are untrained or under-trained, in cognitive and affective skills. Cognitive skills are good habits of thinking and judgment. Affective skills are good habits of attitude and motivation. Drivers thus lack the necessary coping abilities such as how to cool off when angered or frustrated, or how to cooperate with the traffic flow and not hinder it. This lack of training in emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995) creates high stress conditions for most drivers.

It is common to relate aggressiveness to social and environmental factors, in addition to individual personality factors. For instance, congestion on highways and anonymity in cars interact with faulty attitudes and inadequate coping skills to produce aggressive traffic behavior under certain identifiable critical conditions. These apparent triggering conditions are unpredictable, and involve symbolic meaning for the dignity or self-worth of the interactants who may later report having felt insulted or threatened. It is part of popular psychology to call these provocative and dramatic conditions "triggers" as in, "It's not my fault. He provoked me. It's his fault. He made me do it." The trigger theory of anger serves to absolve the perpetrator from some or all of the responsibility for the aggression or violence. The attackers see themselves as the victims through self-serving speech acts by which they escape culpability and opprobrium (Searle, 1969). It is common for road ragers to show no remorse for their assault and battery, judging what they did as justified and deserved.

Multi-tasking behind the wheel is a matter of degree and all drivers are responsible for determining when they need additional self-training activities. When drivers overstep this line, they become socially and legally responsible. Drivers who allow themselves to be distracted by their multi-tasking activities are increasing the risk factor for themselves and imposing that dangerous limit on others--passengers, other drivers, pedestrians. This increased risk to which others are subjected is thus similar to other driver behavior that are considered aggressive and illegal: going through red lights, failing to yield, exceeding safe speed limits, reckless weaving, drinking and driving, driving sleepy or drowsy, road rage, etc.

Level 1--Oppositional Driving

At level 1 we're unfit to handle road exchanges because our feelings are oppositional and negative, made worse by irrational thought patterns. The result of this deadly combination is an impulsive, reckless, and hostile driving style. Most drivers operate their vehicles at this lowest level of emotional intelligence some of the time, and many drivers are in it most of the time. In this precarious mental state, it's easy to interpret a traffic incident as a personal insult that encourages a bad mood and produces other negative consequences. Being intolerant goes along with thinking irrationally about other drivers because in any incident, they are always at fault while we excuse our own mistakes. A self-serving bias interferes with the ability to be objective and logical. Our surveys show that one in three motorists are oppositional drivers on a regular daily basis. Two-thirds are oppositional to a lesser degree, and rare is the driver who claims to be peaceful, tolerant, rational, and law abiding all the time, or even most of the time.3 It's very useful to discover the elements of one's oppositional thinking.

Level 2--Defensive Driving

Defensive driving teaches motorists to concentrate on the safety of the vehicle, driver and passengers. This preparedness philosophy helps reduce irrational decisions and encourages more logical thought patterns, such as, "What would happen if..." and "If I do that they'll respond with that..." As a result, actions are more prudent than in level-1. However, a level-2 orientation has disadvantages because it encourages a competitive environment on the road. As defensive drivers we can still measure success competitively in terms of how fast we get there, how many cars we leave behind, or how long we can coast without having to touch the brakes. Driving defensively does not provide immunity to negative thoughts, to impatience and intolerance of the faults of other drivers. While defensive driving is more mindful than oppositional driving, it leaves us in a state of competition or suspicion.

Level 3--Supportive Driving

Level-3 driving overcomes the disadvantages inherent in oppositional and defensive driving orientations. Supportive driving is a mental orientation that enables drivers to manage other motorists and the traffic using a positive approach that avoids the built-in negativity of oppositional and defensive driving styles. The key to acquiring a supportive driving mentality is to practice prosocial thought patterns that promote helpful actions and a benign demeanor. Supportive driving styles encourage us to be prudent and safe as well as tolerant and friendly by focusing on the enjoyment of driving while remaining unfazed by its hassles. Oppositional driving incorporates antisocial thought patterns, while defensive driving incorporates negativity as a normal part of driving. Supportive driving is a mental orientation that emphasizes the positive bias, opposite to the automotive vigilante mentality. Instead of finding fault with the other driver, find an excuse (e.g., "Look at that air head forgetting his blinkers on. Oh, I take it back. Maybe he's really preoccupied, or confused. We all make mistakes, including me. Etc."). The key in maintaining a supportive driving orientation is witnessing your antisocial statements and immediately neutralizing them with prosocial statements. Do this consistently and you become a supportive driver.

Review the contrasts between anti-social and prosocial driver orientations in the Chart below, and explain the difference in each example. Show how they differ in terms of the focus. For example, consider the first example: "They're bone heads!" is a negative orientation, vs. "I'm feeling very impatient today!" is a positive orientation because it accurately focuses on me and my feeling impatient today. The negative focus is antisocial because it always wants to blame, punish, and retaliate. The positive focus is prosocial because it is rational and objective and stays away from aggressing against another. Try come up with an explanation for each of the other items: Why one is subjective, false, and injurious while the other is objective, true, and peaceful?

The transformation from negative and aggressive driving to positive and supportive driving is illustrated by the driver competence skills in the chart below. The oppositional driving mode is a negative mental quagmire while the positive driving mode is emotionally intelligent because motorists exert rational self-control. The actual words in these examples may not fit your own style of thinking-to-yourself, but try to figure out what each example stands for, and think of the words you would use in that frame of mind.