The Effects of Psychological Aggressive Characteristics Among the Performance in Learning Driving Skills

Abstract

Young, novice drivers constitute a disproportionate percentage of fatalities and injuries in road traffic accidents around the world. This study, attempts to identify the effects of psychological aggressive characteristics among the performance in learning driving skills. Anger as a general concept can be defined as a multidimensional construct that can be expressed at the cognitive, emotional, psychological and behavioral level (Eckhardt, Norlander & Deffenbacher, 2004). Driving rage is an extrapolation of the general concept of road rage (Deffenbacher et al., 2003). Steering wheel anger, in other words, is conceptualized as a frequent and intense tendency to become angry while driving (Deffenbacher et al., 2003). The results of this study are showing a significant difference between the driving skills acquired by those who have a lower score at the “anger” scale and we also revealed that there is a negative correlation (r= -7.4) between the level of skills and the level of the “anger” parameter.

Keywords: driving anger, aggressive driving, anger expression,driver behaviour

JEL Classification: O35