The state of Michigan has confiscated 1361 car license plates under a new law that cracks down on habitually bad drivers. Police can remove the plates of a repeat offender, replacing them with a paper temporary plates. If convicted, drivers can lose the use of their cars for 3 months, to 3 years!

Saw it on MrTraffic's Newsletter

Concern, particularly among "younger" drivers, about the number of "older" drivers on the roads and their driving abilities is already growing. Statistics, when calculated based on all people injured or killed in traffic crashes, may indicate that older drivers are at a disproportionate risk for becoming involved in fatal crashes. For example nationally, in 1995 senior citizens accounted for:

5% of all people injured in traffic crashes;
13% of all traffic fatalities;
13% of all vehicle occupant fatalities; and
18% of all pedestrian fatalities.
Statistics show that in two-vehicle fatal crashes involving an older and a younger driver, it is 3.1 times as likely that the vehicle driven by the older person will be struck. In 27% of these two-vehicle fatal crashes the older driver was turning left.

original here

There appear to be three psychological categories of vehicles people drive: tough driving cars (sports, light trucks, SUVs), soft driving cars (economy, family), and special driving cars (vans, luxury). Each of these psychological categories has its own aggressive driving syndrome that distinguishes it from the others.

It is evident that aggressive driving is a cultural norm that is generationally transmitted as a habit imbibed in childhood when riding with parents and reinforced by repeated media portrayals of drivers behaving badly. To get us out of this, I propose a program of Lifelong Driver Education.

Differences in aggressiveness between young drivers and older drivers is a cultural norm about how we change our behavior as we get older. Differences between men and women drivers constitute a cultural norm about how men and women behave in our society. For these reasons, contrasting demographic sub-groups of drivers reveals cultural forces in operation in the mind of drivers.

Continued here

By Jan Hefler
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF

You've probably done it, especially when sitting in traffic gives you nothing better to do but survey the landscape and glance furtively at others hunched over steering wheels in the gridlock. You decide to wave another motorist on, a fellow sufferer, hoping for a similar break the next time.

Maybe second thoughts are in order.

A precedent-setting Superior Court decision in Burlington County says you can be liable if your waving motion is followed by a crashing sound.

The ruling and a subsequent settlement came in the case of a delivery truck driver, Donald L. Cook from Hi-Nella, who allegedly gave the go-ahead to a motorist trying to enter traffic from a Wawa store in Southampton Township.

The motorist, Lori B. Miller, formerly of Pemberton Township, tried to turn left to drive east on Route 530, a four-lane highway. She crossed in front of Cook, who was westbound in the slow lane, and collided with a car in the second westbound lane. That car then hit a pickup truck that was headed east and trying to turn left into the Wawa store. The accident happened near the Route 206 intersection.
The driver of the second car, a passenger in that car, and the driver of the pickup had minor injuries.
All the injured parties sued Cook and Miller for causing the Feb. 2, 1994, accident. Miller also sued to bring Cook into the case.

Miller's insurance company paid the entire $30,000 settlement, but not before Judge Harold B. Wells 3d ruled in October that Cook could be held liable for his actions.

Wells' opinion is the first one on the liability of a traffic waver published in the New Jersey Reports and New Jersey Superior Court Reports, an official record of significant judicial decisions that lawyers cite in future cases.

Lawyers in the case said they had found no case law on the subject in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

Wells' ruling, published in the Feb. 22 issue of the Reports, came in response to a motion by Cook's attorney, Steven Antinoff, for a summary judgment removing his client from the case. Wells denied Antinoff's motion and ruled that wavers can be held responsible for accidents if a jury deems them to have been careless. The judge said it should be up to a jury to determine whether the motorist did as the waver intended.

"It is relatively easy for waving drivers to check if passage is safe, and if unable to do so, a driver contemplating a gesture should not take on the responsibility of directing traffic. Because gestures are so common and the risk of injury from car accidents so severe, it is only fair to impose a duty [ of liability ] upon waving drivers," Wells wrote in his seven-page decision.

"The ruling sets a precedent, but it is not necessarily binding on other judges," the judge said in an interview this week.

Attorneys in the dispute said their research revealed that judges in some states -- Ohio, New York, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Wisconsin, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Utah and Minnesota -- have lined up nearly evenly on both sides of the issue.

"Very few states have addressed this issue," said Daniel J. Siegel, a lawyer with offices in Marlton and Pennsylvania, who represented one of the injured parties.

Siegel said the case has caused him to change his own driving behavior. "I wave less," he said.

Citing an Ohio decision, Antinoff argued that a gesture allowing a driver to pull out in front of another is nothing more "than a simple courtesy or a yielding of the right-of-way."

Besides, he contended, his client maintained that despite witness reports to the contrary, he had not waved at all but just left a gap for Miller to pull into. "But even if he did, I argued that he has no obligation to check traffic for other drivers," Antinoff said.

He said Cook did not expect Miller to try to cut across two lanes. He said his client had expected her to turn right, in the same direction he was going. Cook, he said, "had stuck around to help out" only to find out later he was being sued.

However, Miller believed Cook had gestured for her to turn left and encouraged her by waving a second time when she hesitated, according to her lawyer.
Yolanda Rivera of Mount Holly was a passenger in the car that was hit first. "I was hysterical and had to be put in a stretcher. . . . It was his [ Cook's ] fault," she said. "He should have never waved someone out into a busy highway."

The driver of that car, Rita St. George of Pemberton Township, said she believed Cook was partly culpable but mostly blamed Miller.

"She shouldn't have taken the word of another person. . . . If anybody waves me through, I wait," she said. She said she was knocked unconscious when her airbag deployed and suffered back injuries that cost her a year of work.

Staff from NHTSA=s Offices of Traffic Injury Control Programs and Research and Traffic Records will join forces to develop safety materials that discuss the physical changes that affect older adults= driving abilities and how these drivers can identify them. These materials will also offer alternatives to driving, and discuss the benefits of walking. Additional materials will be developed for medical personnel and community organizations.

These materials will increase traffic safety awareness for older adults, members of the medical profession, and community organizations. The materials will also provide information about some of the lesser-known transportation alternatives designed for older adults.

original NHTSA newsletter here

Jon Ferry --The Province

Snap, crackle, pop. The days have long gone when you could drive a motor vehicle while munching on a bowl of cereal, as one Vancouver driver was discovered doing recently.

Modern motoring and modern motor cars have become so complex you almost need a degree to be able to drive.

Indeed, if there is one subject we should be teaching our children from the earliest possible age, it is how to be a good motorist -- not how to love the Nisga'a treaty.

Driver education, including the psychology of motoring, should be a compulsory school subject from kindergarten to Grade 12, just like math and English. It should be a degree course at university.

We hear a lot about the evils of drugs and other crime. But, car crashes cause far greater carnage, killing 3,000 Canadians and injuring another 240,000 each year.

Most of that mayhem is caused by bad, emotionally-challenged drivers. So there is very little that is funny about "road rage," in which righteously-indignant motorists become so disturbed by real or imagined slights from other drivers, their brains explode into mush like shattered pumpkins, causing irrevocable havoc.

If there ever was a bright side to road rage, however, it was contained in a Reuters news agency story last week about raging California grannies.

An 88-year-old woman had pulled into a handicapped parking space at a Santa Clara hospital. Unhappily, it was the same space into which a 67-year-old lady had been waiting to squeeze, while bringing her 98-year-old mom in for an appointment.

The 67-year-old female knocked on the window of the 88-year-old's vehicle, but the older woman was hard of hearing and ignored her. Outside the car, some pushing and shoving ensued and the older woman hit the pavement.

When the smoke cleared, the 88-year-old was in hospital with a broken hip, the 67-year-old was awaiting news of possible criminal charges and the 98-year-old was a potential witness.

The fact is road rage -- or parking lot rage -- involves people of all ages and all nationalities, not just aggressive Americans.

Handicapped parking spaces bring out the worst in Canadians too. An Edmonton driver called Dave boasted on the Internet about using his one-ton van to ram a taxi driver who refused to budge from just such a space.

"It cost him $2,700 for repairs and he was out of service for three months," Dave said.

Can you imagine what he'd have done if the cabbie had cut him off? Run him over and left him to die?

We Canadians like to think of ourselves as a kinder, gentler people than Americans. We are anything but, according to an ongoing study of nasty driver habits by road rage expert Leon James, a Canadian psychology professor now teaching at the University of Hawaii.

James's on-line survey has found that 30 per cent of Canadian drivers admit to making insulting gestures to other motorists, compared to 24 per cent of Americans; 15 per cent of Canadians admit to chasing other motorists in "hot pursuit," as against eight per cent of Americans, and five per cent to getting into actual fights, versus two per cent of Americans.

The Reader's Digest calls Vancouver drivers some of Canada's worst.

"Welcome to British Columbia," said writer Robert Kiener, "where at least 150,000 drivers are un-licenced and prohibited."

It is the un-hinged drivers that worry both me and James. He says we are not training our children at an early enough age about driving skills, driving psychology -- and driving morality.

"We need to teach kids how to drive because that's part of the essential skills of an adult human being today," he said in a telephone interview recently.

ICBC, of course, does not believe in school driver education.

If you do, write us and let us know -- without taking your hands off the wheel.

original here

THE AGGRESSIVE DRIVING SYNDROME

by Dr. Leon James

DrDriving's research shows that the aggressiveness syndrome is made of the following 16 driver behaviors. Ask yourself how many of these apply to you on a regular basis:

1. feeling stress
   
2. swearing
   
3. acting in a hostile manner
   
4. speeding
   
5. yelling at other drivers
   
6. honking at other drivers
   
7. making insulting gestures
   
8. tailgating
   
9. cutting someone off
   
10. expressing road rage behavior
    
11. feeling enraged
    
12. indulging in violent fantasies
    
13. feeling competitive with other drivers
    
14. rushing all the time
    
15. feeling the desire to drive dangerously
    
16. feeling less calm and level headed behind the wheel

These 16 driving behaviors define the aggressive driver syndrome. They are all significantly intercorrelated. This means that if you do one of them regularly, you will also do many of the other 15 on a regular basis.

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Do you swear behind the wheel?

There are large differences in driver swearing behavior when you compare age groups. Young drivers (15 to 24) swear the most (66% do it), but as they get older (25 to 54), they tend to reduce somewhat (60%), and finally, when they enter the senior category of driver (55 to 94 -- in this sample), they greatly reduce their swearing (42%). Still, these data show that swearing is a cultural driving norm related to age, and a strong one. Six out of ten young drivers swear and cuss at other drivers, and 4 out of 10 senior drivers do so. Obviously, we need to examine this lack of civility between drivers--see this interesting article in the Seattle Times relating aggressive driving to Washington's Rules of Civility.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you switch lanes without signaling?

Do drivers of different age groups vary in their lane hopping behavior, depending on the type of car they drive? The answer is Yes, as usual: Regardless of the type of car they drive, young people outdo older people in illegal lane switching. There is a high cost for this recklessness since crash fatalities are one of the main causes of death for this age group. The tragedy of it is compounded by the fact that our culture raises these youngsters by providing them with an ideology of driving aggressiveness and hostility as portrayed in the public media--see my report here. The good news is that cultural habits can be retrained by a new cultural focus as I argue in my congressional testimony, namely, Lifelong Driver's Ed from K through 12 and after that, Quality Driving Circles or QDCs that are neighborhood-based or related to the workplace.

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Do you tailgate dangerously?

The results for the 10 states in this sample for which I had enough respondents to make statistical comparisons, show the worst five States with a mean of 21% dangerous tailgating: Colorado (25%), Georgia (20%), Pennsylvania (20%), Michigan (19%), Texas (19%). The lowest tailgating States are: Illinois (8%), New York (10%), Florida (14%), Ohio (15%), California (18%).

There are as you might expect, age differences as well as gender differences. Among young drivers, 19% admit to tailgating dangerously, which is about one in five. This is more than middle aged drivers (15%) and senior drivers (6%). This age pattern recurs in many aggressive driving behaviors: as we get older, we drive less aggressively. Women admit to as much tailgating as men (15%), in general, but once again there are significant influences attributable to the type of car they drive, as show in this table:

You can see that those drive the "soft" cars (family and economy) tailgate less than those who drive the "hard" cars (sports and SUV) with a ratio of two to one. This holds true for both men and women. However, with SUV drivers we see a reversal between the genders: more female SUV drivers tailgate dangerously, by their own admission, than male drivers of SUVs.

DrDriving,
I have been in several accidents in the last 5 years. 4 Senior citizens, one born in 1917 who drove away after the accident I just got my insurance cancelled for which I will have to pay an increase. It's time to put these seniors on buses and take their driving licenses away and save the insurance companies and the general public a lot of money. My father in law gave his license up at 65 saying cars are too fast, road changes are a constant problem and he didn't want to be responsible for someone else's death. Living in a small community, seniors are all over and I intend to sue the old lady born in 1917, for my grief, mental problems and insurance increases because she decided to brake at an intersection with a green light to make sure nobody was coming. I was not charged, but she was, leaving the scene, but my insurance goes up anyway.

What is your opinion on this problem? e-mail DrDriving

Dear Epidemiologist,

My research indicates that drivers 25 to 54, who make up the bulk of the nation's 177 million drivers, remember their parents as aggressive drivers, but not as aggressive as they rate themselves. For example,

Our research indicates that aggressive driving is a cultural norm that we learn from childhood as we ride in cars and watch drivers behaving badly on TV. Clearly, aggressive driving habits are transmitted from one generation to the next. The norms vary in accordance with gender, age, and one's driver personality. The Table above shows that age is a big factor in aggressive driving. When drivers are still young and inexperienced, they take more risks and are less safe. For instance, one in two young drivers (49%) admit to running red lights, a risky behavior that decreases to 18% as drivers enter the senior age category. Tailgating is done by one in four young drivers, but decreases to 12% when they enter the 55-plus category of highway citizenship.

The drivers were also asked about how they remember their parents as drivers. The percentages in the last column of the Table indicate that as a generation, we have distinct memories of our parents' aggressive driving habits. One in five of us (20%) remember our parents as yelling at other drivers. There is an alarming tendency for the current generation to see itself as more aggressive than our parents were. It's possible that we are discovering here a tendency for each generation of drivers to be more aggressive than the previous. This would be expected if road rage is a "culture tantrum" and aggressive driving a cultural norm. If this holds up, we better do something about it.

A new approach that helps older drivers become more aware of their vulnerabilities and declining abilities is the Driver Simulator. It makes you aware of declining reaction times and your tendency to compensate for it by taking more dangerous risks.

With declining vision you are more likely to miss some crucial piece of information or detail that can help you avoid a crash. Thinking is also slowed down so that it takes longer to make a decision such as taking evasive action. Proactive readiness can compensate for these problems. An example is AARP 55+ Alive National Program. Another example is participating in a Quality Driving Circle.

And yet there are many advantages in being an older and more experienced driver. Younger drivers enjoy fantasies of violence more often than older drivers. Older driver feel compassion towards other drivers more than younger drivers do.

See more results here.

Thanks for your e-mail response. You asked me what I see as "defensive driving"; this is my ninth year of teaching the 55 Alive/Mature Driving program. You are probably very well acquainted with what it is about. As I view it, the emphasis is on self-appraisal, that is, being very honest with myself, no denial allowed.

1. We teach it is important to check ourselves out before we get behind the wheel. If we are not physically or emotionally sound, to hold ourselves accountable and not drive.
   
2. We teach the need to self-appraise our aging process; Vision, hearing, peripheral vision, reaction time, depth perception, etc.
   
3. We teach a minimum of 3 seconds clearance between my car and the one I am following.
   
4. We look at hazardous road conditions; prefering right turns, where possible; yielding ROW; Keeping eyes moving to get the 'bigger-picture"
   
5. How to compensate for age related physical changes; be alert to impact of medications on reaction time; keeping a "space - cushion" between us and the other driver; being mindful of "blind-spot" hazard. When to quit driving.

These are some of the high-lights of the course. I am a retired physician, and really see my participation in this work as helping older drivers (many of whom have never had driver ed) drive safely for as long as possible.

People ask me how do we regulate older people. When they walk into our office, they take a standard vision test, and if the examiner has any concerns about their physical or mental abilities, he tells them to come back for a driving test. Or he might send them back to their doctor for a more complete exam.
A second mechanism is, any dangerous driver may be reported to us by a physician or family member, and we will follow that up. If it's a doctor, we will immediately send a letter requiring that person to come in for a road test. If it's a family member or neighbor, we will personally go out and visit the person in question to make a finding.

The third way we monitor is, if somebody's in a crash, the investigating officer fills out a crash report. If he believes the driver's ability should be re-tested, he checks a box, and that person will be required to come in for a road test or else their license will be suspended.

(...)

MICHAEL SEATON, 54, American Association of Retired Persons executive and creator of the popular 55Alive driving course: For the average older driver, losing a license is like breaking a hip and having to go into a nursing home: Suddenly you're immobile, you can't go anywhere. To not be able to drive in this country is terrible: Even if you limit yourself to sunny days and certain hours, you want that independence. Sometimes AARP gets the bad rap. People think we're just interested in protecting elderly drivers, but we're not. We've always been consistent on this. We do support more rigorous testing for everyone. We'd like to have in-person renewals every four years for people of all ages. That way everybody is tested the same. If the older people fall out, so be it, but to castigate a whole age category is just not right

(...)

MALCOLM BEARD, 77, retired chairman, Florida Senate transportation committee:We debated this. I just don't think the elderly drivers are the problem. The problem is from about ages 16 to 26. Probably the elderly drivers' problem is driving too slow and all that, but some of these other people are cutting in and out of traffic and crossing three lanes. Young people. Daredevils. The only problem is, the elderly people don't really want to give up the driving privilege, so they drive perhaps longer than they should. But we've got bigger problems as far as I'm concerned I don't think we need to keep on looking to penalize the elderly. Most of them have been driving for 40 or 50 years, and some of them have a perfect record as safe drivers. They have eye checks . I think that's sufficient. I'll tell you what, when I feel I'm unsafe to drive, I'll just quit.

(...)

JOSE GUERRIER, 44, senior research scientist, Stein Gerontological Institute: We do know as people get older, their vision gets worse; they process information more slowly; they take longer to react. But older people also try to compensate by driving less, avoiding rush hour and difficult maneuvers. You might say they self-regulate. For this reason, if you look at the data for every 1,000 licensed drivers, older people actually have fewer accidents. However, by another measure, if you control the data taking into account that older people don't drive as much, then you find that on a per-mile basi