Territorial Markings as a Predictor of Driver Aggression and Road Rage (2008)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00364.x?prevSearch=allfield%3A%28szlemko%29

by bookofjoe • 11 months ago

28 46 11 months ago

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

I like this sort of study/theory that imparts practical, actionable tips on how to reduce problems in one's life.

Been on a driving safety kick lately. There's lots of alpha on the table. My most important rules for myself: minimize driving, avoid rush hours.

IncreasePosts• 11 months ago

Wouldn't rush hour be safer since the average speed is much lower?

throwaway173738• 11 months ago

The increased traffic density changes people’s behavior in a really significant way.

CWuestefeld• 11 months ago

No. The trope that faster speeds are more dangerous is at least misleading, and possibly outright false.

It's certainly true that a given accident would be more severe if speeds are higher. That's just physics.

However, in at least some circumstances, accidents are more likely to occur at slower speeds. In your example, rush hour has both more accidents and slower speeds. But also, there's a well-documented effect of a "risk thermostat", where people tend to balance risk such that they exhibit less care when other things would be making things safer. Thus, when speeds are slower, people perceive greater safety and are (maybe subconsciously) more willing to engage in offsetting risks such as playing with their phones or just daydreaming, just because they can. The result is that slower speeds can lead to a greater quantity of accidents (even if those accidents are of lower severity because they were slower).

What remains to be proven is how those two effects offset each other. It's not clear whether the "greater severity" or "more accidents" effect dominates the overall picture.

analog31• 11 months ago

I wonder if reaction time is a factor. Driving in congested traffic, I've noticed that it's difficult or even impossible to maintain what we were all taught was a safe following distance. As a result, the drivers are not in complete control of their cars. For instance if someone stops suddenly in front of them, they crash.

Spooky232• 11 months ago

People signal some of this stuff with vehicle and “aesthetic” choice as well. It’s sort of the human equivalent of a dog marking a tree.

nradov• 11 months ago

There are plenty of signals. For example, Nissan is notorious for being willing to finance "credit criminals" whom other brands won't touch. And while not everyone with a low credit score is also an unsafe driver, the correlation is pretty strong.

hungmung2• 11 months ago

Drivers on their phones scare the living shit out of me. I've driven across America way too many times, and there are a lot of people on the interstate that are texting or just browsing the internet while they drive at full speed. My partner riding shotgun would count them but it became somewhat impractical after a while. There's a trope in my head now of teens/young-20's driving fucked up Altimas going 90mph+ down the interstate with their eyes down on their phones and not looking at what's in front of them at all. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen one rear end a semi ala Jayne Mansfield by now, which is apparently becoming not uncommon.

Edit: forgot to add. I was one of the first vehicles to the scene of somebody who plowed head-on into a boulder while driving about 60mph. Killed 4 people. I was able to find the police report later and it turns out the driver was updating her Instagram in the moments leading up to the crash. That sort of thing leaves an impression on you when you see it first hand.

ToucanLoucan• 11 months ago

There's a subreddit called "NissanDrivers" that studies and proliferates the notion that drivers of Nissan's are uniquely bad, regardless of age, citing numerous data points. Namely:

* It's common to see Nissans in the wild with body damage

* It's culturally known or at least assumed that Nissan will finance a vehicle for basically anyone, no matter how bad their credit is

* Nissans regularly engage in aggressive driver behaviors and driving patterns

Why it is so many problematic drivers are attracted to Nissans (and other "budget" brands, like Kia and Hyundai which also feature regularly on the sub) seems to come down largely to... well, people who make good choices in life don't generally sign an 84-month loan that will end with them having spent $70,000 on a car that costed $27,000. There's an air of classism to the entire thing, however it's difficult to disagree with based on what's shown.

Obviously that's all extremely prone to confirmation bias and all manner of prejudices so to be clear, I'm not saying I agree, I'm just saying it's interesting how Nissan as a brand is so widely associated with poor people who allegedly make bad decisions, financial, and in their driving. It's also worth noting (and probably what's anchoring this impression is) that Nissans are, in spite of their awful financing, cheap. As are Kias and Hyandais, so more people own them at scale, and therefore more bad drivers also own them at scale. Once the narrative is in the wild, there's little that will arrest it from being "confirmed" by people and passed along as understood fact.

They also have a ton of bumper stickers, too.

profsummergig2• 11 months ago

I drove-by about 5 minutes after an SUV had hit a deer and rolled over (possibly trying to avoid it). There was stuff from the car strewn all over the road, and 2 bodies lying prone in the ditch on the road side. The police were already there, trying to revive them.

Leaves an impression.

By the next day the road had been swept clean. I searched and searched for info on the crash online and in police reports. No info.

chatmasta• 11 months ago

This is just a link to an abstract.

appreciatorBus• 11 months ago

I was able to download it on Academia.edu. Requires an account but you can use a throwaway and it works fine.

https://www.academia.edu/25283398/Territorial_Markings_as_a_...

bookofjoe2• 11 months ago

Looking to Avoid Aggressive Drivers? Check Those Bumpers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/0...

tbrownaw• 11 months ago

This paper is available on sci-hub.

It's based on three surveys:

Study 1
The study participants were 178 university students (127 female, 51 male) who were 18 to 42 years of age (M = 20.8 years, SD = 3.0). Participants who owned a vehicle completed the survey for extra credit in a 200-level Psycho- logical Methods course. The extra credit was equal to less than 1% of their total grades, with approximately 90% of students participating.

Study 2
The study participants were 203 students (119 female, 84 male) who were enrolled in an introductory psychology class and who owned a vehicle. The students completed the study as part of a course research requirement. Participants ranged in age from 17 to 43 years (M = 18.7 years, SD = 2.0). Participants were predominantly Caucasian (88.7%). Other ethnicities included Native American/Alaska Native (0.5%), African American (2.0%), Asian (4.4%), and Latino (4.4%). All vehicles were manufactured between 1966 and 2005 (Mdn = 1996; mode = 2002), and length of ownership ranged from 2 weeks to 15 years (M = 26.8 months, SD = 22.0).

Study 3
Study participants were 69 students (38 female, 31 male) who participated in the study in partial fulfillment of a research requirement for an introduc- tory psychology class. The participants were all between the ages of 18 and 22 years (M = 18.8, SD = 1.2). All students owned their own vehicles. The vehicles were all manufactured between 1978 and 2004 (Mdn = 1997; mode = 2002). Time of ownership ranged from 2 months to 13.3 years (M = 26.2 months, SD = 22.2). As with the other studies—and characteristic of this university—the sample was pre- dominantly Caucasian (87.0%). Other ethnicities included Latino (5.8%) and Asian (7.2%).

griffzhowl• 11 months ago

I remember someone, I think it was Joseph Heinrich, pointing out that a lot of psychology should really be thought of as "psychology of the contemporary American undergrad", since these are the most-studied population

HPsquared• 11 months ago

aka the Streetlight effect.

'A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

Animats• 11 months ago

Or worse, people on Mechanical Turk.

Bad sample populations are a huge problem. There's only one really good study on sexual behavior in in the US, called "Sex in America, a definitive survey".[1] It was expensive, but they did it right. They used a random process to select a large number of regions across the US, then random individuals within those regions. There was a mailed survey, followed up by a phone survey, followed up by visits by interviewers, followed up if necessary by paying people to do the survey. The result was 90%+ participation. That's how you overcome selection bias.

The main result is that, for the overall population, sex is rather mundane.

[1] https://archive.org/details/sexinamericadefi00mich/mode/2up

tlb• 11 months ago

Tesla and Waymo must have huge data sets that could be used to correlate driver badness with the appearance of their vehicle. It's probably not in their interest to publish such data, but one can hope.

kej• 11 months ago

I feel like they'd have some interest in publicizing the worst of human drivers to make robots seem better in comparison, and this could tie into that.

staplers• 11 months ago

  they'd have some interest in publicizing the worst of human drivers

That would likely alienate much of the current political populace. Manipulating emotionally explosive people is corporate bread and butter. They might keep this in their back pocket if they ever find value in that however.

anticorporate• 11 months ago

I suspect there's a similar link between a vehicle's noise level and driver aggression, although I suppose intentionally loud cars are just another territorial marker.

james_marks• 11 months ago

Anecdotal, but if you keep an eye out for people with damage to their car, they will often be almost causing a collision that would hit the same spot.

I tend to think of it that they didn’t learn the lesson, although I suppose a more charitable version is they they didn’t actually make contact this time.

xnx• 11 months ago

Car damage tells you a lot: They been in an accident before. They're not concerned or able to repair their vehicle. They have less to lose since their vehicle is already damaged.

FourteenthTime3• 11 months ago

As an avid cyclist I have decades of data on aggressive driving, and the most aggressive drivers (those who try to run me off the road) are almost always pickup trucks. If I limit my dataset to just country roads, that statistic goes to 100%. Cyclists and pickup trucks are the American cultural polar opposites.

RandomBacon6• 11 months ago

"As an acid cyclist," do you stop at every red light and stop sign?

Or do you constantly break the law because you claim it's for your safety?

As an avid car and truck driver, I give bicycles the full lane like any other vehicle on the road, and I give them plenty of distance before switching lanes in front of them to mitigate turbulence. I almost never ride my bike on the street, so please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.

But it's annoying to see every bicycle that I encounter at an intersection, breaking the law. I always wait instead of assuming they are going to stop, because I don't want them crashing into my vehicle.

dreamcompiler• 11 months ago

Bicyclists who break the law rarely kill other people.

noahjk• 11 months ago

But it's annoying to see every bicycle that I encounter at an intersection, breaking the law. I always wait instead of assuming they are going to stop, because I don't want them crashing into my vehicle.

This is a great example of an internal narrative which you could reframe (if you chose to).

Instead of framing the interaction as "breaking the law" and you protecting your property from the adversarial cyclist, you could instead see each of these as an opportunity for a friendly community gesture of allowing a cyclist to continue on without expending extra energy stopping and starting, plus helping them stay safer through movement (since most cyclists don't have a brake light to signal they are slowing or stopping and can't always use hand signals when navigating situations, and being rear ended is a real concern for bikes).

Either way you're doing the same thing, right? So you can internally decide to view it through a negative or a positive lens. But either way, I'm sure the cyclists you stop and wait for are grateful!

FourteenthTime3• 11 months ago

"do you stop at every red light and stop sign?"

Yes, because my life depends on it.

Do you follow every single law when you drive? Probably not, because the consequences are far less mortal for you in a truck or car.

I also don't blame rape victims for wearing short skirts.

throw0101c• 11 months ago

But it's annoying to see every bicycle that I encounter at an intersection, breaking the law.

And as a motorist, motorcyclist, and bicyclist, it's annoying to see drivers break the law, which they statistically do more often than bicyclists per a Danish government study:

* https://politiken.dk/danmark/art7185605/Rygterne-om-cykliste...

* Via: https://electrek.co/2024/01/11/cars-or-bikes-surprising-resu...

Studies out of the UK and Florida have similar results: cyclists either follow the law at the same rate, or better. Motorists breaking the law has been so normalized that most people don't notice it.

silisili2• 11 months ago

This logically tracks, but remember that correlation isn't causation. It stands to reason that people who see driving as an aggressive venture choose the largest vehicle they can.

But as pickups make up 20ish percent of all passenger vehicles, it's obvious that not all pickup drivers are aggressive or traffic would probably never actually be moving.

amy_petrik• 11 months ago

I disagree. The pickup driver still has hope. A dream, a wish, a future. They may be aggressive jerks on average, surely, maybe they think they're better, maybe they're a bit emotionally out of control, sure. But if they're in a game of chicken, if the icy spectre of death appears before them, they will still give pause to consider the stakes, to think of their loved ones.

There is another type of driver, completely void of fear, a driver who has stared into the abyss and become the dragon. And that is the minivan driver. All hope is lost for the minivan driver. First of all, they're driving a minivan, speaks for itself. Second, we're talking about a 20 year old beater minivan held together with duct tape, driven not by fuel but by a sort of vacuum energy, the bleak desolation of it all, of life, nihilism on wheels. If such a vehicle is faced with a game of chicken, the driver won't blink but embrace the mortal transition to nirvana knowing their estate will only lose the market value of 1 beater minivan, about $20 and that death will be a sweet release from their miserable life

silisili2• 11 months ago

Absolutely hilarious and beautiful writing. Do you have a blog by chance?

bdangubic• 11 months ago

fuck now I have to sell my car…

Territorial Markings as a Predictor of Driver Aggression and Road Rage (2008)

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