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If someone cuts you off on the highway, do you take a deep breath and turn up the radio, or put your foot down and stand right in front of their bumper?
Road rage is all too easy to slip into, but it can become a real problem when it starts to affect the way people drive.
Scientists at the University of Warwick have identified some of the most common behaviors of aggressive drivers.
They say these self-driving vehicles will help identify and respond appropriately to road users who may have lost their composure.
It comes after a study found that women suffer more from road rage than men.
Scientists at the University of Warwick have identified some of the most common behaviors of aggressive drivers (stock image)
Knowledge of aggressive driving also enables those exhibiting it to recognize that they are doing so and take steps to relax themselves.
According to the Metropolitan Police, an average of four or five people are killed on British roads every day.
“This widespread devastation is mainly caused by dangerous and reckless drivers,” Detective Superintendent Andy Cox said.
Past studies have shown that road rage affects more women than men, and that women are much more likely to lose their composure behind the wheel.
The researchers suggested that women have an instinctive “early warning system” that dates back to our early female ancestors who had a sense of danger to threats.
Another study found that the worst drivers drive on Tuesdays in September, between six and nine in the morning.
For their study, published in Analysis and prevention of accidentsthe researchers analyzed the results of 34 published studies on road aggression.
They largely involved asking participants to recall an angry memory before using a driving simulator to put them in an aggressive state.
A control group of participants who were not prompted to get angry would also drive the simulator.
As both groups did this, their vehicle speed, lateral control, and driving errors were recorded.
They defined a driver as aggressive when they engaged in behavior that intentionally endangered others, either psychologically, physically, or both.
From these results, the researchers were able to identify the two main aggressive driving behaviors.
These were that aggressive drivers have an average higher speed of 3.3 mph (5.3 kph) than non-aggressive drivers, and they also show 2.5 times more errors.
Mistakes included failure to signal when changing lanes, collisions, violation of stop signs, and exceeding speed limits.
The researchers say motorists can speed up to relieve their frustration when they hit traffic or a slow driver, for example.
The anger they feel or express, for example by yelling, can also serve as a distraction from driving and lead to more mistakes.
The authors say the finding could help quantify aggressive driving and “provide the basis for a monitoring system for aggressive driving in vehicles.”
“This allows the driver to be alerted when they are at increased risk of an accident and allows the vehicle to use calming methods such as adjusting the noise level in the cabin, playing relaxing music or ultimately reducing the vehicle’s speed. ” said Roger Woodman, assistant professor of Human Factors and co-author.
The findings could also aid in the development of self-driving technologies.
PhD student Zhizhuo Su, the lead author, said: ‘This research is important because, as the era of autonomous vehicles approaches, road traffic will be a mix of both autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles, driven by people who may drive aggressively. .
“This is the first study to quantitatively characterize aggressive driving behavior in a systematic way, which can help the autonomous vehicles identify potentially aggressive driving behavior in the environment.”