As you are doubtless aware, the Government have recently introduced new measures to enable the Police to crack down on drivers who are lane hogging and tailgating on our motorways. From years of study though it appears that there are also psychological behaviours that can affect our driving standards despite how technically accomplished we are at the task:

• We fail to realise when we’re being aggressive – or we don’t care
• We believe we’re safer than we really are
• We forget that other drivers are people too
• We behave more aggressively to those of ‘lower status’
• We believe we can see everything happening around us
• We think other drivers can’t see us
• We attribute near misses to a lack of ability in other driversWe overestimate our own skills
• We drive more recklessly when we’re going soloWe believe hands-free car phones are safe

These areas are amplified in the following article:

This initiative draws attention to a fascinating branch of science called traffic psychology, which studies the human and environmental factors that influence our driving behaviour. Decades of research in traffic psychology suggests that poor driving is shaped by far more than carelessness or a subset of “problem drivers”. Even the most skilled road users are subject to loss of social awareness, intuitive biases, contradictory beliefs, and limits in cognitive capacity.

via Bad driving: what are we thinking? | Science | theguardian.com.

Be honest with yourself, have you ever been guilty of any of the above!?