Towards a sociology of traffic

By: J. Peter Rothe

Date: Thursday, 10. August 2006

Peter Rothe is the author of several books on traffic safety, including Rethinking Young Drivers, The Safety of Elderly Drivers, Beyond Traffic Safety , and Challenging the Old Order: Towards New Directions in Traffic Safety Theory.

At first glance, driving a vehicle may be considered a routine action in which people engage in a casual, everyday manner. Yet, while we need not be overly concerned or anxious about this familiar world of driving, a passionate drama about traffic has unfolded.

Issues about impaired driving, speeding, non-use of seatbelts, youth and driving, motorcycling and trucking have become highly visible. Public officials, traffic safety adherents, corporate representatives and community activists have selected, labelled and introduced particular groups of roadway users to the public as risk-takers, deviants, selfish, aggressive and dangerous behind the wheel of a vehicle (Parry, 1968). The indignation amounts almost to panic.

As the indignation escalates, so do social life contradictions. On television, a commercial is shown to encapsulate the viewer's perception that driving a Nissan sports car is like flying a fighter jet. A few hours later, news reporters announce that National Highway Traffic Safety Administration research findings prove that motorists who speed are more likely to cause accidents than those who do not. A poster in a pharmacy reads, "Speed kills."

Public service messages imply that risk-taking drivers are irresponsible people who live on the edge of ecstasy, dread, exuberance and threat of death. Yet Reebok, a world-wide sporting goods manufacturer, in one of its television ads, advises viewers to "Play hard. Life's short." Pictured is a skydiver jumping out of an airplane with a surfboard tied to his feet. Others, like the War Amps of Canada, encourage people to "Play safe."

Breweries advertise that a preferred quality of life is synonymous with drinking a certain brand of ale. According to Postman et al. (1987), a Miller beer commercial inferred that men like to play rough, take chances, and ignore (or find amusing) the costly and dangerous consequences of their behavior. Often the messages imply the use of vehicles.

Activist groups like Mothers, Fathers, and Students Against Drinking Drivers claim that alcohol and driving is a potent mixture for catastrophe. People engaged in "vile acts" of impaired driving are society's enemies. Police departments warn motorists that they are certain to be caught at roadside checks if they decide to consume alcohol and insist on driving.

However, McEwen and McGuire (1981) reported that the perceived risk of apprehension for traffic offences, including drinking and driving is a remote possibility.

There is ambivalence in society's attitude towards danger and risk-taking. A common belief is that "real people" participate in sports like mountain climbing, hang gliding and sports car racing, all of which involve elements of risk. The young are discouraged from being soft or timid. Instead they should challenge fate and be bold (Macmillan, 1975). And yet challenge is proscribed.

Adventure in a high-powered vehicle on an open four-lane highway is considered to be a disregard for public safety, the motive inappropriate and narcissistic. Qualities like taking risks in business, recreation or gambling are glorified in the media as "Good risks," as seizing the moment for good reasons like fame and fortune. But applied to driving, when motorists "put a tiger in their tank" enabling them to "get out of town fast," agents define them as risk takers or wrongdoers who need to be punished (Macmillan, 1975).

Within this social ethos we find drivers trying to make proper decisions and drivers-to-be developing "safety-conscious" attitudes. We find a hodge-podge of unrelated and even contradictory perspectives offered up in a smorgasbord of research methods, safety messages, threats, warnings, and ideologies, all of which directly or indirectly impact the motorist.

Politicians call for expedient control measures, often with insufficient data. Administrators search for efficient and cost effective means for highway maintenance, auto marketing directors strive for maximum car sales, police officers use roadside discretion for professional image, and so on. These human factors play a role in the construction of traffic safety.

Looking through sociological lenses

By wearing a set of sociological lenses when we look at speeding, we do not see speed solely as a propulsive action, rationally thought out by the driver in terms of gain. Rather, we see life being played out under normal social conditions such as drivers needing to speed to keep their jobs, to keep appointments, to meet family obligations, and to do things on time as expected by friends.

With our new lenses we see the roles that social obligations and personal identities play in driving, that drivers who speed are not necessarily willful risk-takers. They may speed to keep up with the traffic flow or take risks because they don't want to be intimidated by other drivers. They may not want to be tailgated or experience gestures that suggest the slower speed at which they are driving is stupid behavior. These factors all have to do with our images as drivers, as defined through other roadway users. They are a few examples of roadway behavior that are difficult to quantify, but they are certainly meaningful.

An alternative perspective

An alternative approach to traffic safety begins with the conception of roadway users as intentional persons whose autonomy varies according to the context in which they find themselves (Burt, 1982). Drivers partake in actions partly in regard to their conditions and needs, and partly in regard to the conditions of others. They operate their vehicles on the basis of balancing a variety of social interests such as family, friends, economics, legalities and personal images. They share responsibility and trust based on an understood morality of the roadway. If it were otherwise, many more accidents would occur on stretches of highway like Ontario's 401.

Society, as we know it, does not exist without shared meanings. The roadway is the social nexus in which collective behavior occurs par excellence. Territories are negotiated, images are sustained through the kind of vehicle we drive. Social commitments with passengers are upheld, verbal and non-verbal interactions with other roadway users take place, symbols are used and principles of compensation for drivers who do not abide by the moral expectations of the streets are readily practised.

Once we view traffic from a sociological perspective we should keep in mind a series of questions: what are the background, assumptions, values, experiences and interests upon which roadway users act? What is the underlying social order of daily life that provides meaning for roadway users' activities? How are driving and safety constituted and mediated by motorists? How do roadway users' common sense constructions of driving reality differ from institutional constructions? If there is a difference? Why is it so? Whose constructions of reality receive priority? What are the immediate contextual factors that prompt driving acts?

To further make sense of traffic within a social context, we should analyze institutions, and how their members use the interests of institutions in their traffic safety pursuits. Sample queries to be addressed are: To what extent is the human factors approach in the analysis of traffic problems built on control, prescription, rationality, efficiency, predictability, simplicity, expediency and available technology? What purpose does labelling serve in traffic safety? What social, cultural, and political perspectives are represented in traffic safety inquiry and organization of intervention strategies? What interests are served by the implementation of intervention strategies?

If we assume that motoring is a social activity and that streets are social arenas, then we must acknowledge the social conditions that impact driving. That is not to say we dismiss valuable learning produced by psychologists, epidemiologists, legal experts, and driving professionals. Rather, it means that we place the information under a social canopy of meaning: establishing how drivers influence each other on the roadway; how relationships with families, friends, lovers, bosses, team-mates play a social role in driving behaviors and perspectives; how cultural and social norms influence how and why certain driving skills are applied; and how psychological characteristics get played out in a social ethos comprised of speed, technology, efficiency and control.

When this is done we are in a better position to understand why motorists drive the way they do and how they do it.

In turn, driver instruction curriculums should incorporate social features as a complement to skill development and rote knowledge. After all, a simple skill like braking is not done in a social vacuum. It is in response to a social context and has social meaning, as, for example, threatening another driver, compensating for an emergency, slowing down for the law, or playing with passengers.

References

Macmillan, J. (1975), Deviant Drivers. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books

McEwan, J. and McGuire, J. (1981), "Traffic Law Sanctions." Technical Report, DOT HS 805 876. Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Parry, M.H. (1968), Aggression on the Road: A pilot Study of Behavior in the Driving Situation. London: Tavistock.

Postman, N., Nystrom, C., Strate, C., and Weingartner, C. (1987), Myths, Men, and Beer. Falls Church, VA: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Rothe, J.P. (1990), "Problem Definition, Research and Educational Program Development." In J. P. Rothe (Ed.), Challenging the Old Order: Towards new directions in traffic safety theory. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.