Behaviour

As drivers, we tend to think that if we can see pedestrians, they can see us, especially during the day. This may not be the case with children if we are driving at speeds of more than 30 km/h. This is also the speed above which the chance of significant injury or death begins to be much higher for pedestrians who are struck by vehicles.

Over my lifetime so far, I've gone from a child who rode on a foam mattress in the back of our family station wagon on summer road trips to a grandfather who would not dream of driving anywhere without grand daughters safely buckled up in proper child restraints. Needless to say, wearing my own seatbelt has become a reflex action. I'm uncomfortable if I don't wear it and don't notice it when I do.

This report, dated May 2017, produced for the New Zealand Transport Agency. It aimed to understand time saving as a motivation for New Zealand drivers’ speeding in the context of other motivations for speeding, and to investigate the effect of education that aimed to improve participants’ understanding of the costs and benefits of speeding.

I watched a woman run a stop sign the other day while I was out for a walk. I knew that this was a route that she traveled often and she should be familiar with stopping there. I could see that she was checking around her as she approached the T intersection so I'm going to assume that she was in a hurry and made the conscious decision to slow down instead of stop.

Sometimes when I read articles on road safety I come across one that really resonates with me. A story from 2008 written by Paul Hergott titled Drivers Need to Smarten Up When Out on the Road is one of them. Paul starts off by saying "We’ve got ourselves a serious attitude problem. We see driving as a right."

Research led by Dr. Thomas Brown of McGill University in Montreal suggests that "surprisingly, these drivers usually don't consider themselves as risk takers. If drivers don't believe they are risky, they will not accept the need to change. On the other hand, if we and they don't understand their behavior, how can they be expected to change it effectively?"

A recent poll by Insights West found that 50% of Canadians feel that drivers in their city or town are worse than they were five years ago. The two top groups of bad drivers identified by three of every five of us were youth and seniors. To top it off, most of us have witnessed dangerous and illegal behaviour on our roads in the past month. Wow! Time to have a look at ourselves in the rear view mirror.

I grew up in a small town where there were no sidewalks unless you counted 4 sides from 3 blocks downtown. As children, we didn't pay much attention to the rule that required us to walk on the left facing oncoming traffic but we did make sure that we were on the edge or even off of the pavement when a vehicle drove by.

When we think of distracted driving, most of us immediately consider cell phone use. While this might be the most common example used in distracted driving campaigns, it is certainly not the only one. Any action that takes the drivers attention off of the driving task is distracting and is to be avoided.

Have you ever met anyone who would admit to being less than a better than average driver? Those of us who are completely honest may say so but our behaviour behind the wheel could indicate differently. It's called optimism bias and it is something that we are all affected by. We are all optimistic about our personal capabilities and that includes our driving skills.