The Real Culprits Behind Road Accidents: Understanding and Changing Driver Attitudes

Beyond skills and knowledge: how attitudes and risk tolerance influence driving safety.

• By Spencer McDonald
• Oct 15, 2024

I have conducted thousands of driving evaluations over 25 years and have run across very few truly bad drivers. This raises the question: why do we continue to have so many accidents on our roads and perhaps within your organization?

It can’t be just a few bad drivers causing all the problems, so it must be something else. Could it be that all of us “good drivers” are the problem?

The Role of Attitudes in Driving Behavior

In fact, even good drivers sometimes take chances and make mistakes in judgment that can result in a crash.

So, what could cause a good driver to become involved in an at-fault accident or property damage incident? To answer this question, it’s important to remember that good driving is a combination of skills, knowledge, and attitudes.

We need skills to safely and competently operate a motor vehicle, knowledge of the rules and regulations, and a positive attitude.

For decades, driver safety programs have identified these elements as the key to accident reduction and done a good job of refreshing knowledge in a classroom or online course and polishing skills with behind-the-wheel training. Having a good attitude is also stressed. But what is a good attitude? What are attitudes in the first place?

We know a bad attitude when we see one, but to successfully make meaningful changes to driver behavior, we need to help drivers understand, recognize, and change their attitudes.

Understanding Risk Tolerance

Attitudes are a mixture of belief systems and values that determine how we experience the world and how we respond to things in our lives, like driving. It is our attitude that determines how we will use our skills and knowledge when confronted with a driving challenge.

Preconceived notions about other drivers based on age, gender, or ethnicity, and expectations about their behavior can create attitudes of intolerance and frustration where cooperation and patience may yield more positive results.

Failure to accept our powerlessness in situations where traffic is slow or tied up can encourage aggressive driving behavior in an attempt to get there quicker.

Our attitudes are the prime determinant of how much risk we take on the road: our risk tolerance.

Risk tolerance is the amount of risk that we normally accept when performing a risky task like driving. What is crucial to understand is that our tolerance for risk can change in a moment based on our internal state and the events around us.

Our emotional state is one of the personal factors that can cause changes in our willingness to take risks. Stress, anger, overconfidence, and fatigue are a few of these factors.

Our expectations play a huge role in the process. If we live in a world of “shoulds”—we drive with the expectation that others should drive properly or safely, respect our space, and follow the rules—then we are setting ourselves up for a stressful trip. When another driver doesn’t meet our expectations and doesn’t do what they should do, we may respond in anger and find that our willingness to take an unsafe risk escalates.

Changing Driver Expectations for Better Outcomes

Anger at other drivers’ behavior and frustration with traffic can cause us to take chances; so can minor problems, like running late.

If you honestly ask yourself if you have ever done something downright dangerous while driving under the influence of stress or frustration, you will likely say yes.

You see, most people are good drivers, except during moments when they become angry, frustrated, or otherwise influenced by factors that elevate risk tolerance.

Changing expectations is just one stress reduction technique that can make a major difference in driver attitudes and behavior. But most driving courses fail to consider it and instead bore drivers with reviews of rules that most already know and, for the most part, follow.

When we live in a world of “is” instead of “should,” we drive with the expectation that there will be discourteous or rude drivers, and that there will be traffic tie-ups and delays. We are armed now, however, with the knowledge and tools to safely and responsibly manage ourselves in these stressful situations. This goes a long way towards reducing risk-taking behavior behind the wheel of the company truck or our personal vehicles.

To make changes in fleet safety, simple driver training is only part of the solution. Defensive driving courses or refresher training that focuses only on driving rules and techniques miss the critical issue of personal factors and attitudes that change risk tolerance.

To be effective, driver safety training and education must focus on driver attitudes about risk and stress and provide more meaningful and workable tools that employees can use to self-manage these states.

“He cut me off” just doesn’t cut it as an excuse for retaliatory behavior that results in an incident.

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.