Multiple Analysis of Risky Driving Behaviors in the Metropolis Mashhad

جغرافیا و مخاطرات محیطی

Article 4, Volume 1, Issue 4, January 2013, Pages 65-78   

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: 10.22067/geo.v1i4.20448

Authors

Ali yousofi^* ; Fatemeh Ghasemi Adkan; Hossein Taghavi Gorji

Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Abstract

Introduction
One of the most important public health threats in the world today, is driving accidents and Iran is among the countries that in driving accidents and loss of life is huge. While 90 to 95 percent of road accidents are caused by human factors. Risky driving behaviors, the second leading cause of death and the first cause of years of life lost due top re-mature death and disability in iran considered. Meanwhile, some of the driver personality characteristics have an important share in intensifying or weakening of risky driving behaviors that most important of them are sensation seeking, angry, aggressive and has -mental health. The purpose of this paper is to present the realism descriptive of risky driving behavior in Mashhad, with a focus on the four personality characteristic, identify processes of risky driving intensifying or weakening.
Study Area
The study area in this research is the city of Mashhad which includes 13 regional and 40 urban areas.
Material and Methods
Present study is a survey research. Research population included all 18years old and older individuals living in the city of Mashhad. Samples selected using "multi-stage cluster sampling" and a sample of 160 respondents were interviewed face to face in 2012.
Manchester Driving Behavior Questionnaire is used to assess risky driving behaviors. This questionnaire consists of 24 items that made and was used by Straddling and Meadows (2000) and is regulated in three parts of lapse, errors and driving violation. For assessing driving anger used Deffenbacher Driving anger-scale (1994) that is a 14-item questionnaire. Driving Anger Expression Inventory was used to measure the aggression. This 49-item questionnaire is a self assessment tool that evaluate of people anger-express when driving. Annett Sensation Seeking Scale was used to measure sensation seeking. Annett Sensation Seeking Scale contains two sub-scales of Novelty and emotional intensity. Also, mental health questionnaire of 12 questions (GHQ-12) is used in order to assess psychiatric disorders and mental health of drivers. To verify the theoretical analysis model of risky driving behavior in which has been identified that has an influence on sensation seeking, anger, aggression and mental health variables on risky behavior, path analysis technique was used.
Results and Discussion
By calculating the direct and indirect effects as well as the overall impact of each factors, four influencing risky driver behaviors are found by using path analysis techniques. The results showed that anger and mental health effects on risky driving behavior are indirect, and aggression effect is direct. However, both direct and indirect sensation seeking effect. Also, results showed that sensation seeking, aggression and anger intensified and the mental health weaken /reduce risky driving behavior show the most impact on drivers risky behaviors associated with aggression (0.35) and variables of sensation seeking (0.26), mental health (-0.18) and anger (0.09) stand on the second and third places.
Conclusion
Driver behavior is recognized in the majority of traffic accidents in the world and Iran, as the main cause of the accident. While driver behavior is quite influenced by the personality. Theoretical claim of present paper is that risky driving behavior consists of errors, lapses and driving violations, under the influence of a set of four features of important personalities including anger, aggression, sensation seeking, and mental health. The results of this claim examines through survey research conducted on 160 drivers in Mashhad showed that: First, willingness to perform risky driving behaviors is low and in this respect responsibility is in a situation of more or less similar. While the extent of divers anger and mental health are more than moderate, sensation seeking is moderate and aggression is lower than average. Second, sensation seeking, aggression and anger intensified and mental health weaken/reduce the risky driving behavior and maximum influence is related to aggression and sensation seeking. The mental health and anger variables are stand in the next places.

Keywords

Risky driving behavior; Sensation seeking; driving anger; aggression; mental health

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