“Don’t you know I own the road?” The link between narcissism and aggressive driving

Aggressive drivers can make driving dangerous. Over 50% of traffic fatalities are caused by aggressive driving. This research tests whether narcissists are more aggressive drivers than other individuals. Narcissists think they are special people who deserve special treatment. When they don’t get the special treatment they think they deserve, narcissists often lash out at others in an aggressive manner. Narcissists might think they “own the road” and can drive anyway they want, and that other drivers should get out of their way. In the article, we conduct three studies to test the link between narcissism and aggressive driving. In Studies 1 (N = 139) and 2 (N = 100), Luxembourgish motorists completed a measure of narcissism and a self-report measure of aggressive driving. In Study 3 (N = 60), American university students completed a measure of narcissism and then completed a driving simulation scenario that contained a number of frustrating elements. Several measures of aggressive driving and road rage were obtained. In all three studies, narcissism was positively related to aggressive driving. A meta-analysis found an average correlation of r = 0.35 across the three studies. This research replicates previous research linking narcissism to aggression, and extends it to a driving context.     

Driving without awareness: The effects of practice and automaticity on attention and driving

This research examined the development of proceduralised “driving without awareness” in a driving simulator by paying participants to drive a simulated road regularly over 12 weeks of testing. This longitudinal research paradigm is a significant departure from previous studies which have examined drivers in a conscious attentional mode using short experimental sessions or cross-sectional designs comparing expert and novice performance. During each session, participants took two “trips” on the simulated road; sometimes travelling on a “to and from” journey on one half of the road, sometimes traversing the entire road in one direction. A range of measures, including driving performance, vehicle detection, perceptual speed regulation, and hazard reactions were collected. The results showed the development of driving patterns and changes in object detection performance indicative of proceduralised driving. Speed and lane position variability quickly decreased with practice, as did participants’ subjective experiences of driving difficulty. Performance on an embedded detection task appeared to become a proceduralised part of the driving task, becoming highly efficient in later stages of the experiment. The changes in attentional focus and driving performance over time provide new light on previous research findings and allow us to critically re-examine several established models of driver behaviour.     

The effects of driving environment complexity and dual tasking on drivers’ mental workload and eye blink behavior

The goal of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of eye blink behavior in measuring drivers’ mental workload. Previous research has shown that when mental workload increases with the primary task difficulty, blink frequency drops. On the opposite, the number of blinks increases when a cognitive secondary task has to be performed concurrently. However, the combined effects of the primary task difficulty and dual-tasking on blink rate have not been investigated. The present study was thus designed to vary systematically both the primary driving task and the cognitive secondary task demand to examine their combined effects on blink rate. The driving task was manipulated by varying the complexity of a simulated driving environment. The cognitive load was manipulated using a concurrent simple reaction time task or a complex calculation task. The results confirmed that eye blink frequency was a sensitive measure to elicit increased mental workload level coming from the driving environment. They also confirmed that blink rate increased with the introduction of a cognitive secondary task while blink duration was not affected. However, eye blink behavior did not provide a clear mental workload signature when driving task demands and dual-task conditions were varied simultaneously. The overall picture goes against the suitability of eye blink behavior to monitor drivers’ states at least when external and internal demands interact.     

Aggression of police officers as a function of temperature: An experiment with the fire arms training system

The impact of temperature on police officers' tension, perception, and behaviour in police—offender interactions was investigated. It was hypothesized that increased temperature results in: (1) increased tension; (2) a negative impression of the offender; and (3) aggressive behaviour. The findings confirmed these hypotheses. Finally, some implications of the results are discussed.     

The influence of music genres on the driving behaviour of young drivers and their visual scanning of the environment

Recently, distractions have been recognized as a significant risk factor in road traffic. This simulator study aims to investigate how different music genres affect the driving behaviour of young drivers and their visual scanning of the environment in urban settings. The genres considered were Croatian pop, foreign pop, classical music, metal, and Balkan folk music, while on one road section there was no music. The research sample consisted of 61 participants (44 males and 17 females) with a mean age of 24.58 years and a mean driving experience of 5.25 years. The influence of music on the drivers’ behaviour was analysed on the basis of the data collected from the driving simulator, eye tracking glasses, and structured observation during driving sessions. It was found that the highest average speed (around 60 km/h) was recorded while the participants were listening to Balkan folk and metal music, while other music genres, as well as the “no music” condition, influenced driving speed in a similar way to one another and the participants drove at 50 km/h on average. Furthermore, the results suggest that the music genre also affects how drivers visually scan the environment (the number of gazes classified as fixations and number of road signs looked at). The findings obtained may be used in road safety work and practical recommendations and further research are discussed.     

A comprehensive systematic review of the laboratory-based research investigating the influence of alcohol on driving behaviour

In the past thirty years, alcohol influence on drivers has been widely researched using driving simulators across the world. However, a critical evaluation of the existing evidence is required to project the current status and provide directions for future investigations. The present study conducts a comprehensive systematic review of the research examining the effects of alcohol on simulated driving performance. The literature search was conducted in academic databases such as Google Scholar, SCOPUS, Transportation Research Information Database (TRID), PubMed, and Web of science. In total, 1015 articles were identified from the initial database search along with 14 additional articles from other sources (Articles Plus, Cochrane Library, Medline, National Technical Information Services, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Medline Grey Literature Report), out of which 110 articles were included in the systematic review. The majority of the studies were conducted in the United States of America (45%), followed by Australia (15%). These studies were reviewed based on the following aspects: type of driving simulator, study design, Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) or alcohol dose used in the experiments, driving environment characteristics, driving performance measures, data analysis techniques, and additional factors affecting driver behaviour under the influence of alcohol. Overall, the evidence regarding driving performance under the influence of alcohol shows that the majority of the previous studies have found a significant impact of alcohol on the various aspects of driving behaviour. The systematic review highlighted the methodological limitations observed in the previous driving simulator studies which should be acknowledged in future research.     

Bicyclists’ behavioral and physiological responses to varying roadway conditions and bicycle infrastructure

Population growth increase of vehicle ownership, and development patterns have resulted in greater levels of congestion, pollution, and crash frequency. A proposed solution to lessen current transportation system demands is to increase the share of bicycle trips. Furthermore, as cycling is perceived by some as both a dangerous and stressful mode of transportation, understanding the factors that lead to less comfortable and stressful riding, can help drive bicycle infrastructure development. To establish a more robust understanding of the behaviors of bicyclists and how infrastructure design and operations influence them, a bicycle simulator was used to evaluate bicyclist performance measures of velocity, horizontal displacement, and physiological responses (i.e., galvanic skin response) while riding in varying roadway conditions. Results showed that bicyclists in the bike lane condition, had a GSR reading 1.77 peaks per min less than when cycling in the no bike lane condition. When bicyclists were in no bike lane condition, the GSR reading was not affected by vehicle speed but it was affected by the vehicular volume. Additionally, females felt less comfortable when riding in either bike condition, even though they reported that they were “Strong and Fearless” riders. The methodology used for this study sets forth the foundation for future research that could evaluate varying facility designs and a wider range of individuals.     

Driving simulation sickness and the sense of presence: Correlation and contributing factors

Driving simulators are useful and effective tools for conducting studies in the field of traffic safety. Simulation sickness (SS) and the sense of presence (SP) are two well-known factors that could affect the results of the driving simulator experiments. This study investigated the relationship between SP and SS in a medium-fidelity driving simulator. Additionally, the impact of the road environment (urban arterials or rural expressways) on these subscales was investigated. Data was collected by means of self-reported questionnaires, which were conducted after the participants have driven the simulation scenarios in a fixed-base medium-fidelity driving simulator. A total of 125 drivers participated in this study. Results showed that females reported significantly higher SS scores than males. An increasing trend in the SS was observed with the increase of age. Importantly, designing buildings that replicate a real-world environment could increase SP and decrease SS. Moreover, designing high quality and resolution scenarios could also increase SP, thus decreasing the severity of SS symptoms. The results of this study can help researchers using medium-fidelity driving simulators to know the influencing factors for each subscale of SP on SS. Adjustments in the driving simulator and scenario settings as well as additional training exercises for higher speed scenarios can be beneficial in reducing the severity of SS.     

A healing relationship: Clients’ experiences of the long-term relational significance of the horse in horse assisted psychotherapy

Horse assisted psychotherapy is a type of treatment for mental ill-health in which the client forms a relationship with a horse. Research suggests that the relationship to a horse is very helpful to clients, but how the horse is experienced many years after the end of treatment has not been investigated. The aim of the present study was thus to investigate how former clients from horse assisted psychotherapy experienced the horse several years after treatment was completed. Former clients (n = 5; all females) from one and the same treatment center were interviewed and the data was analyzed with an inductive thematic approach. The analysis showed that many years after completion of treatment, the horses were still remembered as the most important individuals in the informants’ lives during the time of treatment. This was captured by the core category ‘A healing relationship’. These findings are in line with previous research that found that patients in horse assisted psychotherapy and their family members attributed improvements from treatment to the patients’ relationship to the horses, but adds that the clients also keep these views at follow-up several years after termination of treatment.