Beginning with the fact that professional drivers, in general, have more driving experience (in relation to the number of hours spent behind the steering wheel, number of kilometres driven and years of experience driving) than novice drivers, the authors focus on attempting to ascertain if exposure to traffic (greater in professional drivers) produces greater degrees of anxiety in professional drivers. In Spain, they have developed a general type of inventory called I.S.A.T. (Inventory of Situations producing Anxiety in Traffic) directed towards evaluating the anxiety experienced when confronted with traffic situations likely to produce anxiety. This inventory is based on the most recent and widely accepted theoretical models on anxiety, the interactive and behavioural models. The I.S.A.T. provides a global score as well as scores in four distinct situational areas: situations which imply evaluation (self-evaluation and external evaluation), situations involving criticism and aggression, situations involving external impediments and traffic jams, and situations involving evaluation by the authorities. The intention of this study was to observe how the I.S.A.T. works in two very different samples, professional drivers and novice drivers, as well as bringing to light, as much as possible, which potentially anxiety producing situations are related to accidents in the two sample groups. It was found that samples were very different. With professional drivers, the situations with capacity to predict accidents were generally related to situations involving delays, impossibility or external impediments in reaching their destination. With the novice group, the situations that predicted accidents more accurately were those involving self-evaluation (in situations the drivers perceived as difficult or dangerous, and which they felt capable or incapable of dealing with) and situations which imply external evaluation.
Abstract