Quiz 10: Aggressive Driving Results

Methodology
My research on aggressive driving consisted of having participants fill out a 10 question survey about what they would do in certain driving situations. Here are a few examples of the questions that I included:

1.You are late for school or work, and the person in front of you is going 10 mph below the speed limit. You…
a.Get annoyed, but maintain a safe distance behind.
b.Don’t mind, at least they are driving safely.
c.Honk, scream out the window, use rude gestures, all possibly while tailgating them.
d.Drive dangerously close to them, aka “tailgate” them, hoping that they will get the hint and speed up.

2.The stoplight has turned green and the person in front of you has not accelerated after 5 seconds. You…
a.Wait, while swearing or complaining to yourself or the other person in your car
b.Lay on your horn while using rude gestures and swearing.
c.Honk your horn gently to get their attention
d.Wait patiently

3.You are at Wal-Mart on a busy Saturday afternoon and the parking lot is full. You see a nearby parking spot become available and you pull forward towards the spot and put your blinker on, clearly intending to pull in. A black sports car speeds around the corner from the opposite direction and parks in the same spot. You…
a.Stay calm. He got there first, so no big deal.
b.Swear or complain to yourself or the other person in your car, saying how rude that was.
c.Get out of your car and confront the person.
d.Honk and give them a dirty look

Each question has answers that I rated from 1 to 4, as follows:
1. low aggression
2. low to medium aggression
3. medium to high aggression
4. high aggression

I asked 20 college students to fill out this survey, ten of which are males and ten that are females. I then determined their results by adding up how many of each rating each person had picked.

Results
I predicted that males and females would have similar habits of aggressive driving. In this survey, I found that males are slightly more likely to be aggressive drivers, as many previous studies have found. However, most drivers fall into the middle categories. On the extreme ends, females tend to be less aggressive and males tend to be more aggressive.


The above graph shows that the ten males chose a total of:
18 "low aggression" answers
23 "low to medium aggression" answers
32 "medium to high aggression" answers
27 "high aggression" answers

And that the ten females chose a total of:
24 "low aggression" answers
35 "low to medium aggression" answers
31 "medium to high aggression" answers
10 "high aggression" answers

Discussion
Most college drivers that I surveyed tend to choose low-to medium or medium-to-high reactions to frustrating driving scenarios. This means that if another driver makes them angry or if they are in a hurry they may complain or curse to themselves or their passengers, get annoyed, and possibly honk their horn or drive somewhat threateningly. Less claimed that they would be completely calm or that they would risk a serious accident or confront a person directly. It seems that most drivers do show some signs of aggression, but it's usually not extreme.

When I originally decided to do this study, I thought about driving around Butte and being the person who annoys other drivers and taking note of their actions. However, I decided that that could be very dangerous and I wasn't going to risk getting into a wreck. However, I think that it may have been a more accurate study because the reactions that people gave would tell the truth.