My car was hit three times this year. What's the psychology behind bad driving?

A motorist in Dubai uses a mobile phone while driving. Many drivers have an exaggerated sense of being in control while behind the wheel. Pawan Singh / The National

They say that trouble comes in threes. Given that my car has been driven into not once, not twice but three times in Abu Dhabi this year so far, I’m inclined to agree.

Thankfully, all three incidents were the kind of low-speed prangs that can happen in any city. The back of my second-hand sedan was crashed into twice, leaving me with police reports to collect, insurance forms to complete, time-consuming trips to the garage – and lingering anxiety about seeing cars approach in the rearview mirror.

In the third incident, the driver in front threw his car into reverse without warning and hit me moments before I was due to arrive at an inspection centre for my vehicle’s mandatory check-up. Irony indeed.

The culprits – all male drivers, by the way – were clearly not paying attention to what was directly in front of or behind them. Such distraction and carelessness were highlighted last month when Dubai Police released images taken by traffic cameras of one driver reading a newspaper while on the road and another driving with a mobile phone in each hand.

Abu Dhabi police highlights risks of distracted driving

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The Emirates has some of the best roads I’ve driven on. Surfaces and lighting are well maintained, and advanced cameras can catch those speeding, tailgating or otherwise driving recklessly. The penalties for infractions can be tough and police regularly run awareness campaigns on road safety. But getting hit three times in less than 12 months has led some friends to suggest, not entirely facetiously, that my wheels are cursed. Leaving aside the supernatural, these collisions have led me to ask myself the following question: why do some people drive a vehicle at anywhere up to 160kph while simultaneously trying to do something else?

I’m not blameless here; I’ll admit to occasionally fiddling with the music or navigation while on the road. It’s a bad habit I’ve mostly corrected by putting my device in flight mode before setting out, thereby removing the possibility of being distracted. But it has never occurred to me to have an entire phone conversation or compose a text message while trying to keep an eye on the cars in front as well as what’s happening in the rear and side mirrors. My multi-tasking abilities are simply not up to the job.

Apparently, this is where too many other drivers disagree. Research carried out by cognitive psychologists into this kind of mental juggling has found that not only do many motorists vastly overestimate their ability to perform two tasks at the same time, the attention and reaction cost of switching, say, from driving to texting and back, is much greater than we think. In 2015, two studies produced by the University of Utah in the US found that drivers who spoke to their car’s infotainment system or smartphone took almost 30 seconds to regain full concentration on the road, even after the task was completed – so much for thinking that recording voice notes instead of typing texts is playing it safe.

But even if we underestimate just how deleterious multi-tasking is to our driving ability, most motorists still recognise that it’s a dangerous habit; the fact that it is illegal to drive while on the phone in the UAE and many other jurisdictions should leave no room for misunderstanding. There are two main reasons why we persist: a flawed conception of risk and the almost complete colonisation of our everyday lives by digital devices.

Why do some people drive a vehicle at anywhere up to 160kph while simultaneously trying to do something else?

Just as we overestimate our multi-tasking ability, many drivers have an exaggerated sense of being in control while behind the wheel.

A 2022 study of more than 1,000 professional and private motorists in Morocco published in Traffic Psychology and Behaviour found that drivers who “possess a high sense of control over road risks tend to have a low perception of these risks and to adopt fewer safety behaviours”. In short, we perceive that we’re in control – for many, driving is an everyday activity, so why not? Therefore, we may sometimes feel that it’s OK to take a chance by replying to that text or answering that call.

That skewed perception of risk is exacerbated by the second reason: the now-unavoidable role of handheld technology. In 2017, psychologists writing in the medical-scientific journal PLOS One noted that “given the sheer frequency and duration of daily smartphone usage it is conceivable that changes in cognition, behaviour and psychological states may be observed in users”. Seven years later, digital devices are more central to our lives than ever.

Dubai Police recently recorded this driver behind the wheel using two mobile phones. Research has found that many motorists vastly overestimate their ability to perform two tasks at the same time. Photo: Dubai Police

The American psychologist Dr Mike Brooks, co-author of Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World, uses Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning thesis to explore this further. Because, Dr Brooks says, smartphones are “associated with ways to meet our psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness” and supply endless information, news, knowledge and entertainment, “the sounds of our smartphones elicit automatic, reflexive responses”. We drive, the phone makes a sound, we respond.

But I’d like to think that although the pull of these distractions is strong, we are capable of making better choices. Yes, many driving schools, theory tests and national authorities emphasise to new motorists the need to avoid distractions. Sure, picking up a few fines or penalty points for phone use can also adjust drivers’ behaviour. But perhaps the key is to make distracted driving as socially unacceptable as drink driving has become in many countries.

But it takes time to change attitudes. For now, I’ll keep my eyes peeled while on the road – and sound the horn a bit more often.