Traffic Psychology

Traffic psychology studies the relationship between psychological processes and the behavior of road users, applying theoretical aspects of psychology to improve traffic mobility through the development of crash countermeasures and education that motivates desired behavior. The field identifies three motivations for driver behavior, reasoned or planned behavior, impulsive or emotional behavior, and habitual behavior, and it applies social and cognitive psychology through enforcement, road-safety education campaigns and therapeutic rehabilitation programs, examining attention, memory, spatial cognition, inexperience, stress, inebriation, distracting stimuli, fatigue and secondary tasks such as phone conversations as factors in crash causation.