Effects of Personality on Risky Driving Behavior and Accident Involvement for Chinese Drivers

Abstract

Objective: Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of injury-related fatalities in China and pose the most serious threat to driving safety. Driver personality is considered as an effective predictor for risky driving behavior and accident liability. Previous studies have focused on the relationship between personality and risky driving behavior, but only a few of them have explored the effects of personality variables on accident involvement. In addition, few studies have examined the effects of personality on Chinese drivers’ risky driving and accident involvement. The present study aimed to examine the effects of personality variables on Chinese drivers’ unsafe driving behaviors and accident involvement.

Methods: Two hundred and twenty-four Chinese drivers aged 20 to 50 were required to complete questionnaires assessing their personality traits (anger, sensation-seeking, altruism, and normlessness), risky driving behaviors (aggressive violations, ordinary violations), and accident involvement (all accidents, serious accidents, at-fault accidents). Multivariate regression analyses, adjusting for gender, age, and overall mileage, were conducted to identify the personality traits related to risky driving behaviors and accident involvement.

Results: Participants’ personality traits were found to be significantly correlated with both risky driving behavior and accident involvement. Specifically, the traits of anger and normlessness were effective predictors for aggressive violations. The traits of anger, sensation-seeking, normlessness, and altruism were effective predictors for ordinary violations. Moreover, altruism and normlessness were significant predictors for the total number of accidents participants had during the past 3 years.

Conclusions: Consistent with previous studies, the present study revealed that personality traits play an important role in predicting Chinese drivers’ risky driving behaviors. In addition, Chinese drivers’ personality characteristics were also associated with accident involvement.

Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Traffic Injury Prevention to view the supplemental file.

Keywords:

• anger
• sensation-seeking
• altruism
• normlessness
• driving behavior
• accident involvement

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, No. 2011CB711002), grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31200766 and No. 91124003), the key project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSZD-EW-Z-008-4) and the Scientific Foundation of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. Y1CX212005). The authors would especially like to thank Torkil Clemmensen (Copenhagen Business School) for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. We also thank Richard Carciofo and Walter Edwards for proofreading.