Bahar Öz

Role of Dispositional Affect on Coping Strategies of Turkish Drivers

Driving is a complex and demanding activity, thus, is mostly accompanied with stress, which is found to influence psychological and physiological health of driver, resulting with increased probability of fatal accidents. Matthews developed first driver stress model, which is a demonstration of interactions between environmental stressors, driver cognitive stress processes, personality traits related with stress vulnerability and stress outcome experiencing by driver. Dispositional affect characteristics are one of the most notable elements of coping strategies. Many studies prove that affects can predict coping strategies. This study is conducted to understand the relationship between dispositional affect characteristics of Turkish drivers and their coping strategies. Results indicate that dispositional affect of drivers are able to predict their coping strategies. Possible implications of these findings are discussed.

Does Traffic Safety Climate Perception of Drivers Differ Depending on Their Traffic System Resilience and Driving Skills Evaluation

Road traffic accidents are one of the most important public health problems in Turkey and all over the world. Traffic system involves many agents from a micro level, such as drivers, to a macro level, such as traffic climate. Traffic system resilience and driving skills are crucial factors that determine the road traffic accidents and their outcomes; in addition to being related to the development of sustainable and safer road traffic system. In this study, it is aimed to investigate group differences derived from traffic system resilience and driving skills with respect to traffic safety climate. For this purpose, 323 drivers (177 female, 146 male), between the ages of 19 and 57 (M = 28.56, SD = 8.96), participated in the study. Participants filled out a questionnaire including demographic information form, Driving Skills Inventory, Traffic Climate Scale, and Traffic System Resilience Scale adapted to traffic settings by the researchers. The data were analyzed by using t-test to be able to compare groups. According to the results, traffic systems that are perceived to be high in terms of resilience were also perceived to be less externally demanding and more functional. In this study, traffic system resilience was evaluated by the perception of drivers and the relationships between traffic system resilience, driving skills, and traffic safety climate were evidenced for the first time in the literature. The implication of the results is discussed by focusing on the ways the findings could be used to improve traffic safety.

PW 2131 Investigating the relationship between driver behaviors andpedestrian behaviors

Road traffic injuries, as a type of unintentional injury, are resulting from road traffic accidents, which are the leading cause of death all over the world. Among all road user groups, drivers and pedestrians are found to be most vulnerable ones suffering from road traffic injuries. Both driver behaviors and pedestrian behaviors are found to be related to the road traffic accidents. The aim of the present study is investigating the relationship between pedestrian behaviors and driver behaviors. A total number of six hundred seven drivers participated in the study. Participants filled out a questionnaire involving demographic information form, Driver Behavior Questionnaire, and Pedestrian Behavior Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics showed that males showed higher driver aggressive violations, driver ordinary violations, pedestrian transgression, and pedestrian aggressive violations than females. According to the hierarchical regression analyses, all dimensions of pedestrian behaviors were found to be related to all dimensions of driver behaviors. Aberrant pedestrian behaviors were found to be positively related to aberrant driver behaviors and positive pedestrian behaviors were found to be negatively related to aberrant driver behaviors. Positive pedestrian behaviors were found to be positively related to positive driver behaviors. Overall, the results indicated that drivers who express aberrant pedestrian behaviors also express aberrant driver behaviors. The results suggest that countermeasure programs aiming decreasing aberrant driver behaviors should also focus on pedestrian behaviors. Education programs should also include training related to pedestrian behaviors. In this way, the programs will be more effective in terms of decreasing road traffic accidents and road traffic injuries. Since traffic system is a complex and dynamic environment with different road users, it is important to understand the relations and dynamics between different behaviors of different road user groups.

PW 1678 Traffic safety climate: the relationship with driving skills and traffic system resilience

Road traffic injuries are one of the most important public health problems both in Turkey and all over the world. Traffic system involves many agents from a micro level, such as drivers, to a macro level, such as traffic climate. Traffic system resilience and driving skills are crucial factors that determine the road traffic accidents and their outcomes like road traffic injuries; in addition to being related to the development of sustainable and safer road traffic system. With respect to those facts, in this study it was aimed to investigate traffic system resilience and driving skills in relation to traffic safety climate. For this purpose, 323 drivers (177 female, 146 male), between the ages of 19 and 57 (M =28.56, SD =8.96), participated into the study. Participants filled out a questionnaire including demographic information form, Driving Skills Inventory, Traffic Climate Scale, and Traffic System Resilience Questionnaire which was adapted to traffic settings by the researchers of the current study. The questionnaire data was analyzed by using hierarchical regression analyses. The results showed that resilient traffic systems were found to be less externally demanding and more functional. Moreover, driving skills, especially safety skills, were found to be an important factor with respect to traffic safety climate. Overall, the results show that traffic system resilience and driving skills are important factors for safer traffic climate. In this study, traffic system resilience was evaluated by the perception of drivers and its relationships between driving skills and traffic safety climate were evidenced for the first time in the literature. Implication of the results will be discussed by focusing on the ways the findings could be used to improve traffic safety.

Telling about something that you do not really know: blind people are talking about vision!

Abstract In Turkey, the laws which define disability have become increasingly harsh, and require disabled people to be assessed in order to determine ‘how disabled’ they are. For blind people, as for other disabled people, these assessments have real consequences. This article aims to discuss an appealing piece that arose during a project, which has bearing on how disabled people tend to answer these questions. The participants are legally blind adults. We, as sighted researchers, asked totally blind individuals to describe their vision. Interestingly, they all answered this question without hesitation. The paradoxical nature of this question was only realized during the analysis. We requested the participants to talk about something they do not really know. This might be a reflection of our over-visualized world and might be due to our subtle prejudices. This type of questioning not only has implications for research, but also for assessments of disability in Turkey.