Aberrant driving as mediator: driving anger patterns and crashes in taxi drivers

Hussain, Zahid; Hussain, Qinaat; Soliman, Abdrabo; Mohammed, Semira; Mamo, Wondwesen Girma; Alhajyaseen, Wael K. M. · 2023 · Traffic Injury Prevention

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Summary

This study investigates the causal relationships between driving anger, aberrant driving behaviors, and road traffic crashes (RTCs) among professional taxi drivers in Qatar. The research is motivated by the high prevalence of RTCs involving taxi drivers, who often originate from developing countries with varying road safety cultures and face significant occupational stressors, such as passenger demands and income pressure. While previous studies have largely relied on self-reported crash data, this research addresses a gap by linking subjective psychological assessments with actual police-recorded crash data to determine how driving anger influences crash risk through aberrant behaviors. The methodology involved a survey of 344 professional taxi drivers from Karwa Driving School, the sole public transportation operator in Qatar. Data collection utilized the Driving Anger Scale (DAS) to measure anger responses to provoking scenarios and the Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) to assess aberrant behaviors, including errors, violations, and lapses. These self-reported measures were combined with objective crash records from the previous four years (2018–2021). The researchers employed exploratory factor analysis to identify the underlying structures of the DAS and DBQ within this specific cultural context. Subsequently, structural equation modeling (SEM) using the PLS algorithm was applied to test direct and indirect causal relationships, treating aberrant driving behaviors as mediators between driving anger and RTCs. The results identified distinct factor structures for both instruments. For driving anger, the "Illegal Driving" component was found to trigger all dimensions of aberrant driving behavior, while "Hostile Gestures" positively correlated with lapses. In the structural model, the "Error" factor from the DBQ was a significant direct predictor of RTCs. Crucially, the study found that aberrant driving behaviors mediated the impact of driving anger on crashes. Specifically, the "Illegal Driving" anger component had a significant indirect effect on RTCs, indicating that anger provoked by observing illegal driving leads to aberrant behaviors, which in turn increase crash likelihood. Demographically, professional driving experience was negatively associated with RTCs, whereas age showed a positive association. The significance of these findings lies in confirming that driving aberration mediates the relationship between driving anger and crashes in a multicultural professional driving population. The study highlights that specific anger triggers, particularly those related to illegal driving by others, are critical precursors to unsafe driving behaviors. These insights provide actionable data for road safety practitioners and driving instructors, suggesting that training programs should focus on helping taxi drivers cope with provoking situations and manage anger to reduce aberrant behaviors and subsequent crash risks.

Key finding

Aberrant driving behaviors mediate the relationship between driving anger and road traffic crashes, with the 'illegal driving' anger component serving as a significant indirect predictor of crashes.

Methodology

survey

Sample size: 344

Provenance

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StageOutcomeToolModelPromptAttemptsCompleted
discover partial scout 2 2026-05-08
archive success canonical_url 10 2026-06-06
extract success cached 3 2026-06-10
clean success clean 1 2026-06-04
chunk success chunk 1 2026-06-04
embed success embed Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B 1 2026-06-04
enrich success semantic_scholar 2 2026-06-04
promote success 1 2026-06-04
summarize success llm qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant summ-v5 2 2026-06-10
tag success vector_similarity 15 2026-06-11
verify success 2 2026-06-10

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

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