Road Accident Questions

  1. In your professional psychiatric opinion to what do you attribute road accidents to? What is the psychiatric aspect to road accidents?

Road accidents are not under the purview of psychiatrists but under transport experts. However, psychology has a very important role here. From here onwards I would be mostly commenting as an expert of psychology rather than psychiatry. So, it is ‘psychological aspect’ rather than ‘psychiatric aspect’.

However certain psychiatric condition, such as mania, may cause the patient to drive recklessly and cause accidents, the frequency in real life is very low. Moreover, medication given for psychiatric or other conditions may impair driving causing accidents at a higher frequency.

Accidents are unintentional phenomena. There are many human factors involved with the causation. Some of them are:

  • Distraction of road users (drivers, riders, pedestrians): Anything that can reduce the mindfulness of the road user, even if it is just walking beside the road. E.g. mobile phone use
  • Detection Thresholds of road users: Impairment of vision, hearing or mist or rain reducing visibility or too much noise affecting hearing.
  • Drugs and alcohol: Impairment of motor coordination affects driving as it is a skill that needs complex such coordination. E.g. alcohol depresses the brain reducing ability to make quick decisions and to move quickly.
  • Driving training and experience of drivers/ riders: More skilled/ experienced less likely to make mistakes.
  • Familiarity with vehicle and environment: More likely to make mistakes if unfamiliar, as there are so many things to pay attention to . In a way, this is some form of distraction.
  • Fatigue: Sleep deprivation or just feeling sleepy (e.g. after lunch or late in the night), may cause micro sleep and end up in disaster.
  • Personality issues: Lack of respect to others (especially vulnerable users); aggression; antisocial qualities.
  • Stress and panic: Somebody, who uses road very sensibly usually, may crash car while driving to pick up child who was injured at schoo
  1. What can be done to minimize road accidents?
  • Improve infrastructure: E.g. having proper lanes system on our roads will ensure more discipline. In certain areas, lanes terminate abruptly or leads to wrong directions. Sometimes lanes are too wide, allowing two vehicles to be side by side in same lane.
  • Change legislature: To reduce clearly recognized risk factors. E.g. drunk driving, texting while driving.
  • Induce behavior change: This is most important. Through community education and other interventions. Here psychology is very important. Please see below for elaboration.

A driver who cuts lane, honks all the time, breaks traffic lights, goes to Australia and from next day he drives keeping to the lane, no honking at all and very respectful of traffic lights. Why? Sometimes native drivers in the developed countries become ill-disciplined when driving in Sri Lanka.

Discipline is much worse in India. Road discipline is a culture. It is a real shame to drive with no respect to others in Australia or some other country. They do not cut off other drivers, not because it is illegal, but because it is a shame to do so.

In our country, we bring up our children to be passive (see my previous article) at school and home, being 100% obedient to adults. But we teach them to aggressive on the road and in public. We advise them to cut lines, push others, beat next car on the road etc. Aggression on the road with no respect to others is a major problem in our country.

  1. What kind of behavior/ personality contributes to road accidents? Please see above.

The other issue in Sri Lanka, is if you are connected, you can get away with whatever you have done. Even if a pedestrian is killed by a driver, the police can let you go if you are connected. This further adds to the lack of discipline in using the road.

  1. What kind of laws should be implemented to deter driving that leads to road accidents?
  • Laws on zero tolerance of drunk driving.
  • Laws discouraging mobile phone use, even with hands free function. Laws to prevent sub-standard vehicles and drivers getting on to road.

However the main weakness in legal attempts to reduce accidents is it targets individual acts but not the repetitiveness. For an example somebody who cuts double lines all the tiem knows how to escape police even if caught. The driver who usually does not do it, does it one day and get caught. Both, if caught, get same punishment, more or less.

  1. When you compare road accidents in Sri Lanka with other countries how better or worse off are we? And what is the reason for this? Is it something to do with culture?
  1. Do road accidents have something to do with the way we are brought up as children or youngsters?

Please see above.

We have been brought up to see traffic flow in a wrongful manner. (ඔබත් අන් අයට මෙන්ම ඔබටම වද දෙවන වදකාර රියැදුරෙක්ද? (රිය පැදවීම හා මනෝ විද්‍යාව) | මනෝ සෞඛ්‍යය) 

We have been brought up to see driving on the road as a competition. As children if the car we travel in beat the other car where our cousins are, we boo at them. We feel we have won. Adults reinforce this behavior.

Additional resources:

http://www.kdu.ac.lk/faulty-of-defence-and-stratergic- studies/images/the%20need%20of%20stratergic%20studies.pdf