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.

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

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.

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

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 basis older drivers say 75 and older become a much higher risk. And in terms of fatal crashes, some data show that for every 100 million miles driven nationally, the driving group aged 16 to 19 has five fatalities; whereas for people 85 and older, it's about 30 fatalities. So at that range, the elderly are six times more likely to be killed than teens.

Original story here

Over the past decade, aggressive driving has killed an average of 1,500 people each year, injured another 800,000 and cost roughly $24 billion annually in medical costs, property damage and lost work time.

The mix of accidents has changed, as the number of speeding accidents jumped 48 percent over the decade -- from 103,000 in 1988 to 153,000 in 1997 -- and other forms of aggressive driving, such as reckless driving, dropped.

However, the aggressive driving rate may be about to go up due to increased highway congestion, warn experts, since the number of miles driven has risen 35 percent while the miles of new roads built has increased just 1 percent.

Source: Scott Bowles and Paul Overberg, "Aggressive Driving: a Road Well-Traveled," USA Today, November 23, 1998.

These groups consider the Hayden bill an example of age discrimination.

It may also be premature, said Jean Carpenter, a California lobbyist for the American Association of Retired Persons.

She said new technology being developed by the Department of Motor Vehicles may make it possible to test all drivers periodically using subjective road-simulation systems that could render the senator's concerns moot.

Many older drivers increase their safety on the road by driving only during daylight and finding routes that involve less traffic or no left-hand turns, she said.

AARP also sponsors refresher driving courses so older drivers can get a break on their insurance.

According to studies, senior drivers have the highest rates of fatal car accidents per mile except teen-agers.

"It isn't just older people who can be poor drivers. Eighteen-, 21-, and 35-year-olds can also be, depending on the circumstances," said Lois Wellington, president of the Congress of California Seniors.

Wellington said she does not oppose driver testing or other attempts to get all dangerous motorists off the road. But she does object to efforts that target a particular age group.

Supporters of the proposal deny that they're discriminating against older Californians. They say they're simply trying to save lives by testing older drivers whose reflexes and abilities may not be as sharp as they once were.

"We put all kinds of burdens on 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds to be tested, and all evidence shows that at age 75 and beyond one's reflexes worsen," says Hayden.

"This doesn't discriminate against anybody unless you think having to take a road test when you're 81 years old is too much," he added..

Original story here || What is your opinion? E-mail DrDriving

I am working on a news article for the Columbia School of Journalism on elderly widows. Many widows over the age of 65, I've found, never learned how to drive a car. Their husbands were the drivers, and when their husbands passed on, they had to become more independent, doing a lot of walking and learning how to take buses and subways. After speaking to many widows over 65, most of them agreed that they did not learn to drive because their husbands didn't encourage them and/or they were very afraid of driving. I'm trying to pinpoint where this fear came from-- obviously, nowadays, women are not as afraid of driving anymore.

If you could offer some insight on this or direct me to someone who could comment on this--how some widows adjust to the loss of transportation aspect of widowhood, and why they never learned to drive-- it would be much appreciated. A written response over the net will suffice. I'm also trying to find out if, generally speaking, there are widows out there who even learned how to drive after their husbands passed on and left them a car.

The reason these women (a) didn't learn to drive all those years and (b), are now so afraid to learn, lies in the male dominated culture which many women alive today have experienced since birth. The majority of married women are regularly abused by their husbands in various ways, verbally, by gesture, physically, psychologically, financially. This is a well known cultural fact and can be observed by anyone in families, the workplace, in movies, and of course, as passengers. Husbands and boyfriends regularly abuse the women who love them. I receive many testimonials of this. Since this is a general cultural practice, you can see that many 65+-year-old widows whose husbands have passed on, or are no longer able to drive, find themselves in this predicament created not by themselves, but by society and the men who abused them.

So now these women need training in driver education that has a psychological component, as outlined in Chapters 8, 9, and 10. Besides the need to understand safety principles, they also need to understand the highway environment, which can be aggressive, hostile, overwhelming. New drivers who are elderly and female have a double handicap to overcome in the eyes of society and the motorists on the road. They need to be given training tools to learn how to manage people's cynicism and hostility towards first, older drivers, and second, female drivers. Especially do they need to know and understand how to monitor their driving in relation to other motorists. Every stretch of road has its repeated users and they develop expectations or "local norms" about how people should drive within that zone. Anyone driving differently violates those expectations, arouses ire, and is treated aggressively and with hostility by the others who are affected.

For instance, older drivers tend to be what people call Left Lane Bandits, which is a kind of passive-aggressive road rage. They will refuse to move over into the right lane, causing a flurry of dangerous activity around them as hundreds of drivers are scrambling angrily to get around them. New drivers who are older need to be trained how to remain alert to this problem, and how to monitor the activity of vehicles around them, especially taking into account how they affect others strong desire to progress quickly. This is especially a problem for older drivers because we tend to slow down in our reaction time to events, taking longer to get going at traffic lights and intersections, or in parking lots.

I strongly recommend that new drivers who are elderly be encouraged to participate in Quality Driving Circles. These are small groups of drivers of any age who meet together on a regular basis and help each other with their Lifelong Driver Self-Improvement Program (please see Reference). The older women drivers especially can benefit from these group interactions, motivating them to continue to develop their driving skills and style. This is much needed since getting a driver's license does not address these skills. Yet they are essential for survival and health.

Older drivers have two things going for them. First, the older you get the more driving experience you accumulate, and since driving is a complicated bundle of skills, being more experienced is an advantage. One example is the skill of assessing risk, an area of driving where young inexperienced drivers are not good at. They get into three times more collisions than older more experienced drivers, a fact seen in their higher insurance cost as well as getting more traffic tickets and license suspensions. In other words, behind the wheel, older drivers can think better than younger drivers.

Second, older drivers can manage their emotions better than younger drivers. Look at the results from an Internet-based survey in January of 1999.

The majority of young drivers swear and go over the speed limit. Young men outdo older drivers in flipping the bird, while young women are either too scared or more compassionate. Tailgating, dangerous lane hopping. and driving through red are much less common among for older drivers. Other driving behaviors that decrease with age and experience include, "Enjoying fantasies of violence", "Experiencing rage while driving" and "Feeling impatient" or "hostile" or "road rage". There is one major exception: older drivers "feel more compassion" behind the wheel.

And yet, this is not a complete picture. Older drivers are better than younger drivers, true, but there is a lot of room for improvement. They know this. When asked,

How do you rate your aggressiveness as a driver? slight 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 strong, young drivers pick 6 while older drivers pick 5. Not too much of a difference! When asked: "How much stress do you experience as a driver on a daily basis? slight 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 strong, the picture reverses itself: 33% of young drivers pick 5 or above, indicating that 1 in 3 of them spend time in the strong stress zone. For older drivers the percentage is 50. In other words, 1 in every 2 older driver aged 55+ experiences strong stress on a daily basis while driving.

There are both medical and psychological consequences to consider. Medically, stress is a killer. It does its work by lowering immune system functioning and raising the concentration of potentially harmful chemicals in the blood. If one in two older drivers experience strong stress while driving, a certain percentage of them will suffer medically unless they learn to manage driving stress. Psychologically, stress is a depressor. People tend to be more pessimistic when they are in a depressed state or mood. They are less happy and contribute to the unhappiness of others. For these various reasons it makes sense for older drivers to use their experience and maturity to use stress management skills while driving. Here are three habits that will reduce your driving stress.

1. Drive with Aloha, pretend you're from Hawaii

Even for us, living in Hawaii, it's easy to forget about Aloha during traffic hours. As drivers, we all need to reaffirm our ideal value we place on human compassion as opposed to selfishness. Supportive drivers are free from competition and criticism. They tolerate the mistakes of others. They forgive and forget. Wisdom teaches that you can't reform the bad driving behavior of other motorists. Next time you feel angry behind the wheel, start making funny sounds, to slow down your breathing. It may also make you laugh. Then talk sense to yourself. Think of the luxury of driving without having to get mad or upset. All it takes is an attitude of latitude!

2. Come out swinging positive

This is a humorous way of saying that positive behavior gives us more control over the situation than negative. If another driver picks on you, you're faced with two choices: to escalate or de-escalate. To escalate means to express your displeasure in a way that's visible to the other driver. The second you express it, you've given up control of the situation because you can't predict how the other person will respond to your provocation. But to ignore the driver can also be dangerous and you're giving up some of the control you could hold on to. You need to be hands on actively trying to do a repair job to the other person's hurt feelings. What's appropriate to do depends on the norms and expectations of the other drivers in that area. Sometimes smiling or waving is appropriate, but not always. When you are already in verbal communication, like on a parking lot, you have the opportunity to better control things if you act calm and non-blaming, especially if you appear to have a genuine concern for the other person's frustration. The point to remember is that you control the situation by taking charge with positive behavior.

Driving elderly requires new adjustments that challenge one's philosophy and ideology. For instance, night vision loss for some drivers is due to glare, and this does not necessarily affect their day light vision. They should thus schedule their driving times to avoid night driving, and possibly rush-hour traffic and bad weather. Sometimes they're hesitant to do this because imposing such new restrictions on one's freedom of transportation is inconvenient and carries the implication of loss of ability. Nevertheless these symbolic meanings can be re-appraised, especially by identifying with one's appropriate age-related peer group.

Automotive sociologist J. Peter Rothe has interviewed many elderly drivers and listened to them in focus groups. From these conversations we can cite some of the concerns senior motorists have about themselves and the concerns others have about them (J. Peter Rothe, The Safety of Elderly Drivers. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990).

Insufficient self-confidence due to inexperience ("After my husband passed away, everything was pushed on me.")

Anxiety due to decline in ability ("I'm sometimes a bit nervous on the blind side on my right when I'm in the left hand lane. The only way I can see is to turn my head and take a look.")

Resentment due to social ostracism ("They think older drivers are worse and should stop driving.")

Hostile behavior addressed to older drivers which they find degrading ("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.")

Lack of awareness of how family members see them as drivers, and disbelief when told of their criticisms.

Inability to see their slowness as others experience it, thinking only that slowness is caution and patience.

Increased difficulty in certain vehicle maneuvers such as parallel parking ("The curb disappears from your rear view mirror before you're really close so I have to kind of guess how far I am."

The distressing experience of information overload on multilane super-highways ("Cars are coming and going on either side and it's taken me a long time to learn to keep in my lane, to signal, to look before I get into that other lane.")

The experience of fatigue during extended driving hours on highways ("They just go on for miles and miles and there is no stimulation. It puts you to sleep.")

Frustration with signs whose letters aren't big enough or they are too similar to each other, and other problems with vision ("Driving would be easier if there were more lines, reflectors, and larger signs placed in the center, not on the side.")

Being very scared of hitting a pedestrian ("Pedestrian crossings should be better marked and lit.")

Coping with disabling diseases or injuries like arthritis, loss of vision, and other health problems. ("I just hope my health stays well enough so I can drive for a long time.")

The dread of crashing or getting into a collision ("I worry about someone going through a stop light, especially late at night with drunks."

Rigidifying of one's driving style due to a preoccupation with taking great precautions ("You don't take chances you did sixty years ago. When a car comes too fast to a stop I just wait until he stops, until I'm sure.")

Strong anxiety about being tailgated, seeing it as an infringement and an attack. ("It's a selfish invasion of my rights."

Refusing to concede that the left lane should not be a cruising lane ("I'm already driving the speed limit so I don't need to drive faster. It's my right")

Experiencing greater difficulty in talking and driving ("My friend was talking but I tried not to talk because it could have distracted me.")

Lapsing into daydreaming episodes ("Somehow I had missed the stop sign there. I didn't see it.")