The politics of training and assessment of candidates for driver’s license in Brazil are defined by the Brazilian Traffic Code and by resolutions of the National Traffic Counsel. For the assessment the candidates have to know the traffic rules, the traffic signs, and basic mechanics of the vehicle, defensive driving and first aids. All this by means of a theoretical course of 30 hours and a practical driver’s course of 15 hours on special areas defined by the authorities and Centers of Driver’s Training. This normalization is problematic because of uncertainty about safety, guarantee of quality and lack of research about the efficiency and validity of driver’s training and assessment. Besides of this exist discussions about problems of economic politics, urban planning, license administration and of driver instructors and examiners training and reduced social control Something doesn’t work well. Because thousands of people are afraid to drive, having a driver’s license and don’t use it. This driver’s phobia has been related to psychological factors and created a new lucrative commerce for psychological offices or courses in Centers of Driver’s Training. The Catholic University Dom Bosco, in partnership with State Traffic Department (DETRAN-MS) aiming scientific cooperation and health and educational intervention, treats, from 1986 on, women with driver’s phobia in the Clinical School of Psychology: “ Overcoming driver’s phobia” The majority of these women have driver’s license and no post-accident trauma. They are afraid of stopping the car on a steep incline, changing car-lane, of the behaviour of other drivers, of driving in the rain, and of hearing offenses. They are citizens of about 30-40 years old, with a life history of order, well-educated and commitment, are afraid of offenses and critics. They are intelligent with high sense of responsibility, have good professional performance and are successful in their personal and familiar life. Symptoms vary in intensity and from person to person, the most important are: anxiety, accelerated heartbeats and sweating. There are disruptions by avoiding, social inhibition and feelings of inferiority, high sensibility and cultural beliefs of using a car as a masculine object and with its own life. The program has seven phases: 1st phase: welcome with individual interview, personal contact, identification and traffic history; 2nd phase: group-meeting with items related to traffic education and traffic psychology; 3rd phase: psychological assessment of basic psychological processes (Rozestraten 1988); 4th phase: group-therapy by cognitive-behavioural treatment; 5th phase: contents defined by the groups, e.g. defensive driving and traffic rules: 6th phase: practical lessons of driving assisted by professors and examiners with training in Multidisciplinary Traffic Studies — UCDB 7th phase: follow-up meeting six months after 6th phase, for feedback of participant’s driving. Those who didn’t manage to drive are referred to individual treatment. Approximately 70% of the participant women of each group acquired the ability to drive with critical conscience, safety and with pleasure. The program reveals a magic-naïve conscience and poor developed abilities for women who passed the examinations of DETRAN. Shows also that the actions at the wheel require the use of abilities that must be learned, practiced and became automatic and that the acquirement of these habits during the program heals the phobia and dispel the image that phobia creates incapacity, incompetence, cowardice and shame. It confirms the need of revision of the political educational project of the theoretical and practical driver’s training well as the revision of the rigor of the permission for driving instructors and examiners. It’s also essential that the training has to be scientifically based and with commitments to citizenship, overcoming the mechanical model and distant from the reality of the environment of traffic there where people will drive. It’s also fundamental that Brazil invest in political preparation and resources for study and research of driver’s phobia in the perspective of prevention and of the politics of driver’s license and the training of instructors and examiners of the traffic training. (Author/publisher) This publication may be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.ictct.org/workshop.php?workshop_nr=25
Abstract