Driving anger in China: A case study on professional drivers

This paper investigated the types of situations that caused drivers to become angry when driving in China by examining the characteristics of a sample of professional drivers. The revised Chinese version of a 19-item driving anger scale (DAS) was used to examine driving anger amongst a sample of 132 professional drivers. The resultant data were analyzed by conducting principal components analysis, reliability and validity tests, producing four categories of anger provoking situations: discourtesy, traffic obstructions, illegal driving and slow driving. Compared with studies conducted in USA and Malaysia, the present study showed that Chinese professional drivers experienced lower levels of driving anger. Regarding demographics and descriptive variables, age, driving experience, and mileage were weakly correlated with driving anger, whereas preferred speed was positively significantly related to driving anger. In addition, personality differences in driving anger also existed as drivers with Type A personality and those in the middle of this continuum reported higher levels of anger than those with Type B personality. When facing certain traffic scenarios, drivers in the anger-out and the anger-in group were found to have higher anger scores than those in the anger-control group. Importantly, for professional drivers, preferred speed and anger expression were found to be important variables in predicting driving anger. Based on the survey and the comprehensive data analyses, this study provides a valuable contribution to developing the Chinese version of the DAS as a reliable and valid tool to measure driving anger among Chinese professional drivers and demonstrates the possible need for interventions among certain personality types to minimize the safety consequences of driver anger.