Differences in Driving Anger among Professional Drivers: A Cross-Cultural Study.

Public transport systems have a vital role in achieving sustainable mobility goals, diminishing reliance on private individual transport and improving overall public health. Despite that, transport operators are often in situations that require them to cope with complex working conditions that lead to negative emotions such as anger. The current study represents a segment of the permanent global research agenda that seeks to devise and test a psychometric scale for measuring driving anger in professional drivers. The present research is one of the first attempts to examine the factorial validity and the cross-cultural measurement equivalence of the broadly utilized Driving Anger Scale (DAS) in three culturally different countries within the Western Balkans region. The respondents (N = 1054) were taxi, bus and truck drivers between 19 and 75 years of age. The results pertaining to confirmatory factor analysis showed that there were adequate fit statistics for the specified six-dimensional measurement model of the DAS. The measurement invariance testing showed that the meaning and psychometric performance of driving anger and its facets are equivalent across countries and types of professional drivers. Furthermore, the results showed that driving anger facets had positive correlations with dysfunctional ways of expressing anger and negative correlations with the form of the prosocial anger expression. In addition, the results revealed that taxi drivers displayed considerably higher levels of anger while driving and aggressive driving than truck and bus drivers. Overall, this study replicates and extends the accumulated knowledge of previous investigations, suggesting that the original DAS remains a reliable and stable instrument for measuring driving anger in day-to-day driving conditions.

Macro-level accident modeling in Novi Sad: A spatial regression approach.

In this study, a macroscopic analysis was conducted in order to identify the factors which have an effect on traffic accidents in traffic analysis zones. The factors that impact accidents vary according to the characteristics of the observed area, which in turn leads to a discrepancy between research and practice. The total number of accidents was observed in this paper, along with the number of motorized and non-motorized mode accidents within a three-year period in the city of Novi Sad. The models used for this analysis were spatial predictive models comprised of the classical predictive space model, spatial lag model and spatial error model. The spatial lag model showed the best performances concerning the total number of accidents and number of motorized mode accidents, whereas the spatial error model was prominent within the number of non-motorized mode accidents. The results found that increasing Daily Vehicle-Kilometers Traveled, parking spaces, 5-legged intersections and signalized intersections increased all types of accidents. The other demographic, traffic, road and environment characteristics showed that they had a different effect on the observed types of accidents. The results of this research can be benefitial to reserachers who deal with traffic engineering, space planning as well as making decisions with the aim of preparing countermeasures necessary for road safety improvement in the analysed area.

An examination of the construct and predictive validity of the self-reported speeding behavior model.

The present study deals with the problem of speeding behavior on rural roads. The purpose of the paper is to examine the construct validity and the internal consistency and reliability of a questionnaire that measures the determinants of speeding behavior. In addition, it aimed to test the predictive validity of a modified theoretical framework of a theory of planned behavior (TPB) in relation to speeding behavior. A total of 546 car drivers from five local communities in the Republic of Srpska successfully completed the questionnaire after reading the scenario. The principal component analysis revealed seven components interpreted as: personal norm, perceived behavioral control, affective attitude toward speeding, subjective norm, habit, descriptive norm, and cognitive attitude toward speeding. A speeding behavior model was developed by structural equation modeling. Personal norm, subjective norm, and affective attitudes were shown to be important variables within the modified TPB in understanding speeding behavior. Overall, the present findings provide significant support for the concept of the modified theoretical framework of TPB in relation to speeding behavior on rural roads. Implications for a speeding behavior model and interventions are discussed.