driverPerspective

Whether on summer holidays, or commuting to work, the time people spend on the road can be a stressful and frustrating experience, as indicated by social psychologists from LSE.

An ongoing study on the social psychology of road safety conducted jointly by LSE and tyre manufacturer Goodyear, and managed by LSE Enterprise’s consulting arm, has identified different ways that people respond when they interact with other drivers on the road. These are based on how they deal with their own feelings and their uncertainty as to the behaviour of other road users.

Through focus groups and in-depth interviews with European drivers, researchers found seven personalities frequently manifest themselves:

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Much of the time we can sit happily in the comfortable bubble of our car, but around any corner we may have to interact with other drivers.  This makes the road a challenging and uncertain social environment. While we may worry about others’ driving, this research suggests that their behaviour also depends on what we do. We create the personalities that we don’t like. From a psychological point of view, these different types of personalities represent different outlets that drivers use to deal with their frustrations and strong feelings. We are not always entirely one or the other. Depending on the situation and the interaction with others, most of us will find several of these profiles emerge.

Dr Chris Tennant, social psychologist, who is leading the research project at LSE.

Most of these behaviors can lead to dangerous situations on the road. Understanding what type of behavior we exhibit and what situations provoke it is a first step for all of us to better control it, thereby creating a safer driving environment for ourselves and others on the road. Besides effective enforcement of laws against aggressive driving; education and life–long learning remain the most powerful public strategies to address this social and emotional aspect of driving and to achieve the greatest improvements in road safety.

Olivier Rousseau, Goodyear vice president consumer tires in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

The personality types emerged out of the first part of the joint research project, which takes a qualitative look into driving behaviour through focus groups and in-depth interviews. With the research, LSE and Goodyear are seeking to identify how drivers influence each other’s behaviour on the road.

The second part of the project is a pan-European study across 15 countries. The final results and analysis of the European-wide study are expected in October.

Read the full media release

Dr Tennant explains more about the ongoing project and these findings:

This press release reflects preliminary analysis of qualitative data produced during an ongoing study.

We analysed interview and focus group data in which drivers describe their responses to interactions with other drivers, in part in reaction to videos of such interactions.  The ‘personalities’ capture the typical range of responses.  This is not presented as an exhaustive or exclusive list; and we emphasise that all drivers take on more than one, probably most, of these ‘personalities’ when on the road in different contexts.

The objective of the publicity, from our point of view, is to stress how each of us influences, and is influenced by, other drivers.  That’s hardly novel, but it needs repeating, and repeating often: forewarned is forearmed – if we remind ourselves of how we react to other drivers, particularly in ‘negotiation’ or conflict situations, we can try to control those reactions.  If we remind ourselves of how our own driving provokes reactions in others – we cannot avoid getting in each other’s way on the road sometimes – then we can each reduce the likelihood that we provoke dangerous reactions in others.  Our research data highlights the importance of completing the formalities of exchanges with others – if someone lets you into the traffic, you need to gesture thanks; if you inadvertently impede another driver, when you realise you’ve done so, you need to gesture an apology.  Stating that you need to ‘drive nice’ is not new, but it needs to be regularly repeated.

From the theoretical point of view, segmenting drivers into different types is also not new, but it is useful for communicating with drivers because we can all identify with the reactions that these ‘personalities’ embody.  What is new from the theoretical point of view is our psychological analysis of the exchanges between drivers – this will form part of Goodyear’s final report on this research and we also intend to publish academic papers on it in due course.

The ongoing research includes a survey of over 8,000 respondents in 15 European countries as well as further qualitative fieldwork.

For more information, please contact:

Goodyear:

Jens Völmicke
jens_voelmicke@goodyear.com
+352 8199 2010

LSE:

Dr Chris Tennant
c.j.tennant@lse.ac.uk
+44 7768 746 205

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