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Lengthy Commutes Take a Mental Toll
Long chunks of time spent on the road has now been linked to lower life satisfaction.
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Self-Control Competes with Memory
Research findings suggest that memory encoding and self-control share and vie for common cognitive resources: inhibiting our response to a stimulus temporarily tips resources away from encoding new memories.
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Waking Up to Dangers of Drowsy Driving
We need to wake up to the fact that sleep is a vital component to safe driving, says psychological scientist Frank McKenna of the University of Reading. The link between sleep and driving safety is
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You’re A Distracted Driver Even When You Ignore That Text
By now, drivers should be well aware of the dangers posed by using a mobile phone while driving. Each day 9 people are killed, and more than 1,153 people are injured in crashes due to driver distraction, according to the CDC. However, new research shows that simply receiving a call or text—even if drivers ignore it—can be dangerously distracting. Psychological scientists from Florida State University, Cary Stothart, Ainsley Mitchum, and Courtney Yehnert, found that an incoming text or call impaired people’s ability to concentrate—even if they didn’t check their phone.
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Why ‘Batman’ Met a Tragic Death on the Highway
Leonard B. Robinson, known as the "Route 29 Batman," was killed this week after his black “Batmobile” broke down on the highway. At the time of the accident, Robinson was dressed in the black Batman costume he often wore to cheer up sick children in the hospital. After his car experienced an engine problem, Robinson pulled over to the side of a dark highway where he got out of the car to check the engine in the dark. Robinson was killed when a passing car failed to spot him on the side of the road. Recent research has shown that pedestrians tend to underestimate how visible they are to drivers at night; likewise, motorists overestimate their own accuracy at spotting pedestrians in the dark.
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‘Inoculating’ Against Road Rage
People’s inability to contain their explosive anger behind the wheel has led to stabbings, beatings, shootings, and fatal crashes. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported that, "at least 1,500 people a year are seriously injured or killed in senseless traffic disputes." In some cases, road rage is essentially the result of cognitive distortions, and there are promising evidence-based interventions that teach aggressive drivers to recognize that dysfunctional thinking, as researchers Christine Wickens, Robert Mann, and David Wiesenthal pointed out in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
