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Abstract
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Bumper stickers such as "Make Love, Not War" and "More Trees, Less Bush" speak volumes about a vehicle's driver -- but maybe not in the way they might hope. People who customize their cars with stickers and other adornments are more prone to road rage than other people, according to researchers in Colorado.
The number of road rage incidents -- bouts of aggressive driving such as speeding or tailgating (close following), or confrontations with other motorists -- has risen dramatically in recent years. In 1995 the American Automobile Association found 12,000 injuries and 200 deaths were linked to US road rage. In 2008, the numbers are estimated to exceed 25,000 injuries and 370 deaths, and many more road rage incidents, especially those that do not lead to injury, go unrecorded.
Psychologist William Szlemko and his colleagues at Colorado State University in Fort Collins wondered whether increasingly crowded roads might be contributing to rising tempers. The volume of vehicles on US roads has gone up by 35% since 1987, whereas the road network has swelled by only 1%.
In humans, as in many other species, overcrowding leads to increased territorial aggression, and the team suspected that this was what was happening on the roads.
What are you driving at?
Szlemko and his colleagues quizzed hundreds of volunteers about their cars and driving habits. Participants were asked to describe the value and condition of their cars, as well as whether they had personalized them in any way.
The researchers recorded whether people had added seat covers, bumper stickers, special paint jobs, stereos and even plastic dashboard toys. They also asked questions about how the participants responded to specific driving situations.
To keep the participants from realizing that the team was collecting information about aggressive driving, questions such as "If someone is driving slow in the fast lane, how angry does this make you?" were interspersed with decoy questions such as "What kind of music do you listen to in the car?". Szlemko's team used a pre-existing scale called "Use of vehicle to express anger" to diagnose the presence of road rage in their participants.
Language: en |