Accident Analysis and Prevention 34 (2002) 229 235 www.elsevier.

com/locate/aap

Anger and aggression among drivers in three European countries

Dianne Parker a,*, Timo Lajunen b, Heikki Summala c
Department of Psychology, Uni6ersity of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK b Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical Uni6ersity, Ankara, Turkey c Trafc Research Unit, Department of Psychology, Uni6ersity of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
a

Received in revised form 20 December 2000; accepted 28 December 2000

Abstract Recent reports of road rage in the British media give the impression that driver aggression is escalating. In order to understand this phenomenon we need to know what it is about driving that provokes motorists to feel anger and then to go on to express that anger in the form of aggression. A postal questionnaire survey of more than 2500 drivers was carried out in three European countries: Britain, Finland and the Netherlands. The study had three main aims: (a) to discover how angry, if at all, a range of situations on the road make drivers, (b) to nd out how many drivers are likely to react aggressively to those situations, and (c) to investigate individual and/or cultural differences in terms of anger and/or aggressive responses among motorists. Results indicate that the same types of behaviour provoke anger and aggression in all three countries, and that trafc density may play a role. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Driver anger; Driver aggression

1. Introduction The media, at least in the UK, have become preoccupied in recent years with incidents of aggressive behaviour occurring between ordinarily peaceful members of the public. There have been reports of, and speculation as to the causes of, a phenomenon that has been labelled trolley rage, and which involves aggression between supermarket shoppers. We have even been told about gym rage and ofce rage incidents in which people are prepared to use force against others to exact revenge or express their anger. However, by far the greatest level of attention has been paid to so-called road rage incidents in which drivers become so enraged by the behaviour of another road user that they explode with rage and an ugly scene ensues. Sensationalist reports of this phenomenon occur with alarming regularity in the British media, and some surveys have reported worryingly high levels of aggressive driving (Lex Report on Motoring, 1996; Sample Surveys Limited, 1996). In some quarters the problem of highly
* Corresponding author. Tel.: + 44-161-2752570; fax: + 44-161275 2588. E -mail address: parker@fs4.psy.man.ac.uk (D. Parker).

aggressive drivers is taken for granted and the focus is on ways in which the behaviour of such individuals might be managed or remediated (Lowenstein, 1997; Deffenbacher et al., 2000). However, others have questioned whether road rage actually exists as a distinctive phenomenon, and believe the term should be dropped in favour of something less emotive, e.g. driver aggression (Ward et al., 1998) One interesting question is what sort of behaviour on the part of a driver is taken to be aggressive by others. One survey asked exactly this and reported that the manoeuvre most commonly felt to be aggressive was close following/tailgating, which 62% of the 529 motorists sampled reported having experienced in the previous year (Joint, 1995). Headlight ashing and the use of obscene gestures were also seen as aggressive by most, and had been experienced recently by 59% and 48% of those sampled, respectively. It seems then, at least on the roads of the UK, that drivers are regularly interpreting the behaviour of others as aggressive. Indeed, 60% admitted that they themselves had lost their temper while driving at least on occasion (Joint, 1995). Driver anger emerged as even more prevalent in a diary study reported by Underwood et al. (1999), with 85% of the 100 drivers taking part reporting having experienced anger while driving during a 2-week period.

0001-4575/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 0 1 - 4 5 7 5 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 1 8 - 5

230

D. Parker et al. / Accident Analysis and Pre6ention 34 (2002) 229 235

A preliminary investigation of the factors that give rise to such aggressive driving was reported by Lajunen et al. (1999). A self-report questionnaire, completed by a volunteer sample of 270 British drivers, included a measure of driving anger adapted from a scale originally developed by Deffenbacher et al. (1994) in the USA. This scale covered a range of driving situations that might provoke anger, and required respondents to indicate how angry they felt they would get if they found themselves in that situation. Factor analysis of the 27-item scale indicated that the situations could be grouped in terms of three underlying factors. These related to anger at having your progress impeded, anger at the reckless driving of another, and anger provoked by the direct hostility of another driver. Younger drivers, and those driving a relatively low exposure had relatively high scores on all three factors, but there were no gender differences in scale scores. It was also found that there were signicant zero-order correlations between scores on the three factor scales and the commission of driving violations, as measured by the 28-item extended Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (Lawton et al., 1997) which includes a measure of drivers own self-reported violating behaviour (with the exception of the correlation between anger at anothers reckless driving and the ordinary violations sub-scale, which was non-signicant at 0.07). Further analysis revealed that the associations of anger at progress impeded and anger at direct hostility with self-reported violations were both mediated by scores on the safetyskills sub-scale of the Driver Skill Inventory (DSI) of Lajunen and Summala (1995). The safety-skills subscale consists of 16 items requiring ratings of a range of safety skills in driving, so that those who obtain a high score rate themselves as safety minded. The relationship between anger at impeded progress, or at the direct hostility of another driver and the commission of driving violations was reduced in those with a relatively high level of reported safety skills. The study of Lajunen et al. (1997) went some way towards establishing the factors that provoke anger in British drivers. However the study had both practical and methodological limitations. First, although respondents indicated how angry a range of driving situations made them, no information was provided as to whether that anger caused them to react in any way. Second, the respondents had all responded to a media appeal for volunteers, and so may have had a particular interest in the issue of aggressive driving. The study reported here enlarges and improves upon the one reported by Lajunen et al. (1997) in three ways. First it uses a sample of drivers who have not volunteered specically to take part in research on road rage. Second it extends the application of the Driver Anger Questionnaire by assessing the relationship between level of anger provoked by each driving situation and likelihood of an

overt aggressive reaction. Third, it allows for the investigation of cultural differences in driving anger and aggression, by covering drivers in three European countries: the UK, Finland and the Netherlands.

2. Method The questionnaire consisted of several sections, only some of which will be reported here. In the rst section, demographic information about the respondent was collected. This included age, gender, annual exposure, accident and trafc offence history and preferred speed on motorways and residential roads. The DBQ section listed 28 driving behaviours, including eight lapses, eight errors, and 12 violations, of which six were ordinary violations and six interpersonally aggressive violations. With respect to each item respondents were required to indicate How often, if at all, this kind of thing has happened to you, using a 6-point frequency scale where 0 = Never, 1 = Hardly ever, 2 = Occasionally, 3 = Quite often, 4 = Frequently and 5 = Nearly all the time. The DAQ section listed 22 potentially anger-provoking situations, and asked respondents to indicate How much each of these situations would make you angry using a 5-point response scale where 0 = Not at all angry, 1 = A little angry, 2 = Fairly angry, 3 = Very angry and 4 = Extremely angry. For each of the listed situations they were also asked to indicate their most likely reaction to the situation, using an 8-point scale labelled as follows: 0 = No reaction, 1 = Try to escape from the situation, 2 = Beep horn and/or ash lights, 3 = Gesture at the other road user, 4 = Swear at and/or verbally abuse the other road user, 5 = Drive close to/follow the other road user in order to teach him/her a lesson, 6 = Stop your vehicle and get out, ready to argue, and 7 = Get out of your car, prepared to engage physically with the other road user. The data were collected via postal surveys. The sampling technique was similar, although not identical in the three countries involved. In the UK a sample of 2000 adults was taken from the electoral register. In the Netherlands 2000 names were selected from the register of telephone users, and in Finland, the names and addresses of 2000 holders of full current driving licenses were obtained from the Finnish register of car owners. Care was taken to ensure that the samples contacted were representative of the whole geographical area of the countries involved. The survey questionnaire was posted out to those sampled, together with a covering letter explaining the research and a Freepost return envelope. Condentiality was ensured, and respondents were not asked to state their names or addresses. The questionnaires were each given a code in order to assess who had responded

D. Parker et al. / Accident Analysis and Pre6ention 34 (2002) 229 235

231

and 3 weeks later, those who had not responded were sent a reminder, a further copy of the questionnaire and another return envelope. A total of 2613 completed questionnaires were returned. Of those 831 were collected from the UK, 703 from the Netherlands and 1123 from Finland, response rates of 42, 35 and 56%, respectively. The differential response rates probably occurred because in the UK or the Netherlands it was not possible to access a sampling frame consisting only of drivers. Therefore, some of those receiving the questionnaire would not have been eligible, as licence holders, to take part in the survey. This means that the true response rate, calculated on the basis of responses from those actually eligible to take part, was undoubtedly higher.

3. Results

3.1. Characteristics of the sample

The characteristics of the sample are shown in Table 1. In all three countries there were roughly equal numbers of males and females, and a good spread of ages. The annual exposure of the UK sample, at 18 612 km per year was substantially less than that of the Finnish and Dutch samples, both of which had an average annual exposure of over 20 000 km. The driving experience of those in the three samples ranged from under 1 year to over 50 years, with an average of around 20 years experience. Respondents were also asked how many accidents they had been involved in as a driver during the previous 3 years, including accidents in which there was damage to one or more vehicles but no injuries. This is a wider denition of an accident than the one used in ofcial statistics which typically excludes property-damage only accidents. Therefore, the percentages of respondents classied as accident involved are relatively high, ranging from 22.5% for the Finnish sample to 31.3% for the UK sample. The Dutch sample differed in some important respects from the Finnish and UK samples, in that the Dutch were older and the sample contained a higher proportion of males. In subsequent analyses comparing the three samples this was dealt with by including age, sex and
Table 1 Characteristics of the sample

driving exposure as covariates, so that their effects could be separated out from the cultural effects of interest. Initial analyses considered the three samples together, giving an overall sample size of 2657, of whom 1123 were Finnish, 831 were from the UK and 703 were Dutch. Table 2 shows the mean scores of the whole sample on each of items in the level of anger scale in the Driver Anger Questionnaire. The occurrence that provoked the most anger, among drivers in all three countries considered together, was when another driver cuts in and takes a parking spot you have been waiting for. A mean score of 2.20 indicates that on average drivers get fairly angry when this happens. The distributional data showed that only 6% reported that this would not make them angry at all, while 39.6% would get very angry or extremely angry. Following this, most anger was generated by having someone drive behind you at night with bright lights on, having someone drive very close to your rear bumper and having someone speed up as you try to pass them. The least anger was provoked by being held up by a driver who was slow to park, or someone slow to move off from trafc lights. Only 2.5 and 2.4%, respectively, of drivers report that these behaviours would make them very angry or extremely angry. Factor analysis was used to reduce the data to categories, a procedure that resulted in ve categories. The category that each item relates to is shown in the left-hand column of Table 2. Scale scores were calculated for each category by summing the individual item scores and taking their mean. The categories were labelled impeded progress, fast, reckless dri6ing, direct hostility, inconsiderate dri6ing, and impatient dri6ing. The alpha reliabilities for these scales fell in the range 0.73 0.89 and therefore are sufciently homogeneous to be treated as categories. Multivariate analysis of variance was then used to investigate possible differences in scores on each of the ve scales between Finnish, UK and Dutch drivers. Gender, age and exposure were used as covariates as it was thought likely that these variables might account for some differences in levels of anger. Table 3 shows the mean scores and standard deviations, of drivers from each country, on each of the

Finland Males Females Mean annual exposure in km (range) Mean age (range) Mean driving experience in years (range) People involved in an accident in the previous 3 years (%) 516 607 20 435 (1300 000) 37.52 (1879) 16.93 (152) 22.5

UK 429 402 18 612 (1241 000) 39.55 (1780) 18.35 (160) 31.3

Holland 499 204 24 637 (1500 000) 45.90 (1887) 23.62 (164) 28.2

232

D. Parker et al. / Accident Analysis and Pre6ention 34 (2002) 229 235

Table 2 Whole sample mean scores on the level of anger section of the Driver Anger Questionnairea Category 5 Item Someone cuts in and takes the parking spot you have been waiting for At night someone is driving behind you with bright lights on Someone is driving very close to your rear bumper Someone speeds up when you try to pass them Someone cuts right in front of you on the motorway Someone coming towards you does not dim their headlights at night A slow vehicle on a winding road will not pull over and let people pass Someone shouts at you about your driving Someone is driving too slowly in the outside lane, and holding up the trafc Someone makes an obscene gesture towards you about your driving A cyclist is riding in the middle of the lane and slowing trafc Someone is weaving in and out of trafc Someone pulls out right in front of you when there is no-one behind you Someone is driving more slowly than is reasonable for the trafc ow Someone runs a red light or stop sign Someone is driving too fast for the road conditions Someone beeps at you about your driving Someone is driving well above the speed limit Someone in front of you does not move off straight away when the light turns to green A pedestrian walks slowly across the middle of the street, slowing you down Someone is slow in parking and holds up trafc
a

Mean (S.D.) 2.20 (1.15)

4 5 4 5 4 1

1.87 (1.06) 1.84 (1.12) 1.81 (1.11) 1.75 (1.09) 1.70 (1.02) 1.48 (1.07)

3 1

1.40 (1.18) 1.34 (0.93)

3 X X X

1.29 (1.15) 1.25 (0.99) 1.21 (1.10) 1.20 (0.98)

1.18 (0.97)

2 2 3 2 1

1.16 (1.06) 1.08 (0.96) 1.06 (1.04) 0.88 (1.07) 0.70 (0.75)

evoked by having their progress impeded by anothers slow driving, and by direct hostility from other drivers. Both were signicantly more angered than Dutch drivers. There were signicant differences among all three countries in terms of the level of anger generated by reckless driving, inconsiderate driving and impatient driving. In the case of reckless driving, the UK sample were most angered, followed by the Finnish sample and then the Dutch sample. Finnish drivers were signicantly more angered than UK drivers by inconsiderate driving, who in turn were signicantly more angered than Dutch drivers. In relation to impatient driving, the Finnish sample were again the most angered, followed this time by the Dutch drivers and then the UK drivers. The type of driving that elicited most anger among the Finns was inconsiderate driving, the scale that included items related to being dazzled by anothers headlights. Both UK and Dutch drivers were most angered by impatient driving. Across all three countries the type of driving that gave rise to least anger was fast or reckless driving. The Dutch drivers were least angered of the three countries in relation to four of the ve types of driving considered. The exception being impatient driving, which elicited least anger among Finnish drivers. The multivariate signicance tests showed that there were also differences between men and women in relation to level of anger elicited by four of the ve types of driving, the exception being inconsiderate driving, and that there were also effects of age in relation to the anger evoked by all ve types of driving. However, there were no effects of exposure on anger. Analysis of variance indicated that men got more angry than women about impeded progress, but that women got more angered than men about fast, reckless driving, direct hostility and impatient driving. Considering age in three categories (17 30, 31 45, 46 and over), it was
Table 3 Level of driving anger by country, with age, sex and exposure as covariatesa Category label Progress impeded Reckless driving Direct hostility Inconsiderate driving Impatient driving
a

0.64 (0.75)

Finnish

UK

Dutch

F value

0.53 (0.75)

1.06a (0.70) 1.06a (0.87) 1.44a (1.09) 1.98a (0.96) 1.82a (0.93)

1.00a (0.61) 1.19b (0.85) 1.34a (0.97) 1.72b (0.86) 2.09b (0.89)

0.81b (0.51) 0.84c (0.70) 0.82b (0.81) 1.56c (0.84) 1.93c (0.86)

21.68b 25.03b 42.83b 30.22b 34.28b

Items showing an X in the left-hand column, did not emerge from factor analysis as related to any of the ve categories of behaviour identied.

ve level of anger scales. There were signicant differences on all ve. The multivariate signicance tests showed that there were signicant effects for all three covariates, and for country. There was no signicant difference between Finnish and UK drivers in the anger

Across rows, means that do not share a superscript differ signicantly. b PB0.001.

D. Parker et al. / Accident Analysis and Pre6ention 34 (2002) 229 235 Table 4 The Driver Reaction Scale: mean scores (and S.D.s) and percentage who would not react at alla Category Mean (S.D.)

233

Would not react at all (%) 81.1 74.7 68.7 65.9 63.4 61.5 53.6 52.3 50.4 48.4 47.6 43.8 43.6 40.5 34.0 33.0 30.2 28.9 25.7 23.5 15.1

1 2 1 2 X 2 3 1 1 3 X 3 1 1 X 5 5 4 5 4 4

Someone is slow in parking and holds up trafc Someone is driving well above the speed limit A pedestrian walks slowly across the middle of the street, slowing you down Someone runs a red light or stop sign Someone is weaving in and out of trafc Someone is driving too fast for the road conditions Someone beeps at you about your driving Someone is driving more slowly than is reasonable for the trafc ow Someone in front of you does not move off straight away when the light turns to green Someone makes an obscene gesture towards you about your driving Someone pulls out right in front of you when there is no-one behind you Someone shouts at you about your driving A slow vehicle on a winding road will not pull over and let people pass Someone is driving too slowly in the outside lane, and holding up the trafc A cyclist is riding in the middle of the lane and slowing trafc Someone is driving very close to your rear bumper Someone cuts right in front of you on the motorway Someone speeds up when you try to pass them Someone cuts in and takes the parking spot you have been waiting for At night someone is driving behind you with bright lights on Someone coming towards you does not dim their headlights at night

0.29 0.39 0.55 0.60 0.56 0.57 0.93 0.85 0.97 1.24 0.92 1.36 1.10 1.17 1.22 1.23 1.42 1.35 2.27 1.47 1.68

(0.75) (0.82) (0.93) (0.97) (0.96) (0.92) (1.27) (1.21) (1.05) (1.49) (1.14) (1.68) (1.27) (1.29) (1.11) (1.29) (1.29) (1.33) (2.02) (1.21) (0.85)

a Items showing an X in the left-hand column, did not emerge from factor analysis as important to any of the ve categories of behaviour identied.

found that there were linear decreases in anger at impeded progress, at direct hostility, at inconsiderate driving and at impatient driving with age. However, the opposite was true of anger at fast, reckless driving which increased with age. Table 4 shows the mean scores and S.D.s, across the entire sample, on each of the items in the Driver Reaction Scale section of the questionnaire. The behaviour that elicited the greatest reaction, on average, was when someone coming towards you does not dip their headlights. As shown in Table 5, only 15% of those sampled said they would not react at all to this happening. On the other hand, over 80% said they would not react at all if a slow driver held up trafc while trying to park. An overview of reactions to the behaviours related to each of the ve categories of behaviour suggests that fast, reckless driving attracts the fewest reactions, while inconsiderate driving attracts the most. Multivariate analyses of variance were carried out to investigate possible cultural and demographic differences in reactions. In relation to each of the items of the Driver Reaction Scale a fair proportion of respondents indicated that they would not respond at all (see Table 4). In order to get a clearer picture of the factors that inuence reactions among those who do react, the Manova analysis was restricted to those in the sample indicating some sort of reaction. This reduced the total sample size to 1284. Age, sex and country were used as independent variables, and scores on the ve reaction scales as dependent variables.

There were signicant main effects of country on three of the ve scales. These were reaction to direct hostility, reaction to inconsiderate driving and reaction to impatient driving. The mean scores from all three countries on each of the ve reaction scales are shown in Table 5. Inspection of the means shows that Finnish and UK drivers reacted in a broadly similar way, and signicantly more than Dutch drivers to the direct hostility of another motorist. In relation to inconsiderate driving, Finnish drivers reacted signicantly more than Dutch

Table 5 Level of reaction to anger by country (excluding non-reactors)a Category label Progress impeded Reckless driving Direct hostility Inconsiderate driving Impatient driving
a

Finnish

UK

Dutch

F value

1.27a (0.79) 0.70a (0.75) 2.13a (1.36) 2.14a (0.86) 2.14a (1.09)

1.18a (0.67) 0.78a (0.65) 1.96a (1.24) 1.77b (0.80) 2.37b (0.96)

1.22a (0.59) 0.79a (0.62) 1.37b (1.25) 1.93c (0.83) 2.72c (1.05)

1.39 0.69 22.69b 21.23b 47.32b

Across rows, means that do not share a superscript differ signicantly. b PB0.001.

234

D. Parker et al. / Accident Analysis and Pre6ention 34 (2002) 229 235

Table 6 Level of reaction to anger by gender (excluding non-reactors) Category label Progress impeded Reckless driving Direct hostility Inconsiderate driving Impatient driving
a b

Men 1.31 0.76 1.82 2.00 2.43

Women 1.11 0.74 1.89 1.89 2.32

F value 35.11b 0.46 1.37 12.39b 8.84a

PB0.01. PB0.001.

drivers who, in turn, reacted signicantly more than UK drivers. Dutch drivers reacted most to impatient driving, followed by UK drivers, while Finnish drivers reacted the least. Across all three countries the type of driving that elicited least reaction was fast, reckless driving, while impatient driving provoked most reaction. It was noticeable that while Dutch drivers were the least angered of all three samples in terms of four of the ve scales, they reacted the least only in terms of one direct hostility. Table 6 illustrates the gender effects found on three of the ve scales, with men reacting more than women to impeded progress, inconsiderate driving and impatient driving There were also age effects in reactions to all ve types of driving, as shown in Table 7. As might be expected reactions tended to lessen with age. However, older drivers were more likely to react to fast, reckless driving than were younger drivers.

4. Discussion The study reported here investigated the level of anger among drivers in three European countries, the types of driving that provoke anger and the likelihood of reaction. Drivers reported how angry each of a range of trafc situations made them, and how they would respond, if at all, to their anger. Inspection of the mean scores for individual level of anger items reveals that the single behaviour most likely to provoke anger in another driver is taking the parking spot he/she has been waiting for. While not explicitly dangerous this
Table 7 Level of reaction to anger by age (excluding non-reactors) Category label Progress impeded Reckless driving Direct hostility Inconsiderate driving Impatient driving
a b

1730 1.30 0.61 2.34 2.11 2.51

3145 1.16 0.74 1.70 1.94 2.47

46 plus 1.20 0.96 1.30 1.75 2.13

F value 5.83a 25.05b 83.46b 20.80b 17.08b

PB0.01. PB0.001.

behaviour seems to be infuriating and, moreover, it provokes a reaction, in that only 26% of those surveyed indicated that they would not react at all if this happened to them. At the other end of the spectrum, the situation where a driver holds up trafc while taking time to park provoked least anger and least likelihood of reaction, with over 80% of those surveyed suggesting they would do nothing in this situation. By and large the behaviours that provoked most anger were also most likely to lead to a reaction. The levels of anger provoked by the ve main categories of behaviour identied varied between countries. In terms of anger at impeded progress and anger at direct hostility the Finnish and UK samples were statistically similar, both reporting signicantly more anger than the Dutch drivers. In response to the reckless driving of another UK drivers reported most anger, followed by the Finnish drivers and then the Dutch drivers. The UK drivers also got most angry at the impatient driving of another, but this time the Finnish drivers were least angry, with the Dutch coming in between the other two. The explanation for this possibly lies in the suggestion made previously that impatient driving is more frequent where trafc is most dense, a situation less common in Finland than in the UK and Holland. Those in the Finnish sample were most angered by the inconsiderate driving of another, followed by the UK and then the Dutch. Comparison of the mean scores also shows that while inconsiderate driving was the type of driving that provoked most anger among the Finnish sample, for the UK and Dutch samples the most anger provoking type of driving was impatient driving. The likelihood of reaction also varied signicantly across the three data sets, above and beyond the differences on account of age, sex and exposure. Although the Dutch drivers sampled had indicated less anger at impeded progress than drivers from Finland or the UK, the Dutch drivers were no less likely to react. In fact there were no differences in the likelihood of reaction across the three data sets in response to having your progress impeded or to the reckless driving of another, once the effects of differences between the samples in terms of age, sex and exposure were removed. Finnish and UK drivers were signicantly more likely to react to the direct hostility of another than were Dutch drivers. Moreover Finnish drivers were the most likely to react to the inconsiderate driving of another, followed by the Dutch and then the UK. However Finnish drivers were the least likely to react to the impatient driving of another, while Dutch drivers were the most likely to. Comparing drivers reactions to the ve main categories of behaviour identied within each data set reveals that for all three samples impatient driving is

D. Parker et al. / Accident Analysis and Pre6ention 34 (2002) 229 235

235

the type most likely to prompt a reaction, while reckless driving was the type least likely to. It could be argued that this latter nding reects the fact that many drivers feel that there is nothing they can do that might affect a driver who is already taking dangerous risks with speed. On the other hand, the level of anger provoked by reckless driving in all the samples is relatively low, suggesting that behaviours such as speeding and running trafc lights are simply not viewed especially negatively by most drivers, and that is why they do not lead to much in the way of reaction. If this explanation is correct, it is very worrying, because speed is known to be a risk factor in the majority of road trafc accidents (e.g. Maycock (1997)). The nding that males react signicantly more to three of the ve sources of anger than women do is not a surprise. If anything, we might have expected this difference to emerge across all ve categories of angerprovoking behaviour. However, there are some interesting age-related patterns in reactions. Across the whole data set, older drivers were less likely to react to the direct hostility of others, or to the inconsiderate or impatient driving of others. This accords with a view of the individual mellowing with age and becoming less inclined to want to set the world to rights. However, the pattern of mean scores in reaction to the reckless driving of others shows the opposite pattern. In this instance older drivers were more likely to react than their younger counterparts, perhaps by virtue of their experience realising that the type of driving included in the reckless driving sub-scale poses more of an actual threat to road users than some of the other types, which might be more irritating but are probably not going to cause an accident directly. This ties in with the nding of Underwood et al. (1999) that reports of near accidents were associated with the frequency with which anger is experienced. In their study near accidents were frequently found to provoke anger, especially where the driver felt that the incident was not their fault. The reckless driving category in the present study includes behaviour relatively likely to put other road users in danger, leading to trafc conicts and perhaps to near misses and accidents. The overall conclusions to be drawn from this study are that the level of anger scale of the Driver Anger Questionnaire includes ve categories of driving behaviour across three European driving cultures, and that both the level of anger provoked by these types of behaviour and the reaction to them, measured in the Driver Reaction Scale items, are broadly similar across those cultures. Where differences exist tentative explanations in terms of the trafc situation prevailing in

each particular country may be suggested. In general, many more similarities than differences emerged, and in all three countries, the behaviours most likely to provoke anger were also those most likely to give rise to a reaction. It could well be benecial to alert drivers to the behaviours most likely to cause another motorist to become angry, and to provoke a reaction.

Acknowledgements This research was supported by a grant from the European Commission (Marie Curie Fellowship contract no. ERBFMBICT972398). The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of Jolieke Mesken, who translated the questionnaire into Dutch and also helped with the collection of data in the Netherlands. The comments of three anonymous referees, and especially those of Jim McKnight, were extremely helpful.

References
Deffenbacher, J.L., Oetting, E.R., Lynch, R.S., 1994. Development of a driving anger scale. Psychological Reports 71, 83 91. Deffenbacher, J.L., Huff, M.E., Lynch, R.S., Oetting, E.R., Salvatore, N.F., 2000. characteristics and treatment of high-anger drivers. Journal of Counselling Psychology 47, 5 17. Joint, M., 1995. Road Rage. Automobile Association, London. Lajunen, T., Summala, H., 1995. Driving experience, personality and skill- and safety-motive dimensions in drivers self-assessments. Personality and Individual Differences 19, 307 318. Lajunen, T., Parker, D., Stradling, S.G., 1997. Dimensions of driver anger, aggressive and highway code violations and their mediation by safety orientation in UK drivers. Transportation Research Part F 1, 107 121. Lajunen, T., Parker, D., Summala, H., 1999. Does trafc congestion increase driver aggression? Transportation Research Part F 2, 225 236. Lawton, R.L., Parker, D., Stradling, S.G., Manstead, A.S.R., 1997. The role of affect in predicting social behaviors: the case of road trafc violations. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 27, 1258 1276. Lex Motor Group, 1996. Lex Report on Motoring. Lex Motor Group, London. Lowenstein, L.F., 1997. Research into causes and manifestations of aggression in car driving. Police Journal 70, 263 270. Maycock, G., 1997. Speed, speed choice and accidents. In: Grayson, G. (Ed.), Behavioural Research in Road Safety VII. TRL, Crowthorne. Sample Surveys Limited, 1996. Road Rage: A Study of Attitudes and Behaviour. West Malling, Kent, Sample Surveys Limited (Reprinted November 1996). Ward, N.J., Waterman, M., Joint, M., 1998. Rage and violence of driver aggression. In: Grayson, G. (Ed.), Behavioural Research in Road Safety VIII. TRL, Crowthorne. Underwood, G., Chapman, P., Wright, S., Crundall, D., 1999. Anger while driving. Transportation Research Part F 2, 55 68.