Submitted by Cedric Hughes on Fri, 11/02/2007 - 18:05
“Aggressive driving” appears to be one of the causes of the head-on crash on the “rain-slicked” Fraser Highway on Sunday October 23rd. A westbound Honda CRX crossed the double line, clipped a Volkswagen, and then collided head-on with a blue sedan, which was then rear-ended by a Toyota Corolla. The driver and passenger in the Honda, two men in their 20s, and the 41-year-old female passenger in the blue sedan, all died. News reports indicate that the female driver of the blue sedan suffered serious injuries. The police indicated that the deceased Honda driver would be tested to determine if drugs and alcohol were contributing factors.
“Aggressive driving” is a catchy headline term but problematic for understanding what actually happened. It is not a legal term representing any considered conclusion about law breaking. It is more like a categorization of the mind, but, as noted in an article by Lawrence Lonero, “A Preliminary Heuristic Model of Aggressive Behaviour in Drivers” the behaviours included in the term range all the way from “any type of risk-taking behavior behind the wheel, including speeding, tailgating, weaving dangerously through traffic, and ignoring signs or red lights” to intending to injure or kill another motorist, passenger or pedestrian. Why the definition has remained so broad and why this lack of precision is a concern are important questions that Lonero attempts to answer.
Sticking with the broadest definition means that aggressive driving is regular enough behaviour in our culture with unacceptable enough consequences to justify the extensive efforts to regulate it. As Mr. Lonero puts it: “The broader definition… is also used in the traffic enforcement community as a vehicle for public relations and a target for selective and automated enforcement efforts.”
Mr. Lonero proposes that narrowing the definition or at least attempting “to build a clearer model” of what behaviours are encompassed by the term ‘aggressive driving’ is an important first step towards finding practical solutions to reduce its “more inappropriate manifestations.” The broad definition has fuelled much speculation about the increase in aggressive driving and the causes: everything from “increased traffic congestion to violence in the media.” This model of a continuum of behaviours leading to extremes also attracts attention and resources that might (if more were known) be better directed to other road safety needs. Such speculation supports Mr. Lonero’s call for more study and, as he notes, “even if the problems are steady or cyclical, and not actually increasing… they lead to unacceptable losses.”
The starting point is to categorize what Mr. Lornero calls “normal everyday driving behaviour.” Then he proposes sorting the various behaviours lumped together as aggressive driving into the following three categories:
- Aggressive-driving actions versus assaults.
- Mobility motives versus road rage reactions.
- Severity of intent and consequences.
From these modeling studies he predicts that additional categories will emerge. This process will help to define the extreme behaviours which, in turn, can lead to study of their causes and suggestions to deal with them. The text of Mr. Lonero’s
Article is online at www.aggressive.drivers.com/papers/lonero/lonero-paper.html.
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