NARRATOR: What gets a driver into a collision situation?
Several things contribute to our driving ability: knowledge, physical conditions, skills, emotions, experiences, judgment, and attitude. Of all of these characteristics, attitude is probably the most important because of its effect on all the other factors.
What is an attitude?
How does it develop?
Let’s stop and get your ideas about this before going on.
Let’s consider how the different parts of your personality develop. Personality develops from experiences, from events in our lives together with the feelings, ideas, and attitudes that these events have stirred up within us.
But actually, your life experience is made up of not one, but three sets of feelings, ideas, and attitudes which can be in control of your personality. We’ll refer to each set as an "Attitude State." Your personality, like everyone’s, is made up of a Parent Attitude State, an Adult Attitude State, and a Child Attitude State.
Your Parent Attitude State is made up of those feelings, ideas, and attitudes that you have adopted from your parents or guardian. When you are acting, thinking, and feeling as you saw your parents do, your Parent Attitude State is in control of your personality.
Your Child Attitude State is made up of feelings, ideas, and attitudes which developed from events and activities in your childhood. When you feel or behave as you did when you were a young child, your Child Attitude State is in control of your personality. That means, any time you are expressing your inner feelings, whether they’re pleasant or unpleasant, you are acting from your Child Attitude State.
Your Adult Attitude State is made up of feelings, ideas, and attitudes which you’ve developed through intellectual and educational experience. It is the most effective Attitude State for dealing objectively with current problems.
Your Adult Attitude State works much like a data processing computer because it enables you to examine facts and data, weigh probable consequences, carefully decide what to do, and then do it. Trouble is, it’s also easily knocked out of control by your more imitative Parent, or your impulsive Child Attitude State.
OK. So much for the structure of personality. Now let’s see if we can learn more about how personality works.
There are both spoken and unspoken cues which help us to identify which Attitude State is in control of our personality in any situation.
Which Attitude State is controlling his behavior? Parent? Adult? or Child?
Sure, the often unspoken cues of joy, fun, and laughter are positive expressions of the Child Attitude State. But the Child Attitude State expresses itself in other ways too. Watch.
MAN: Hey Bob, do you ever take the HOV lane on your way to work in the morning?
BOB: HOV lane?
MAN: Yeah, you know, the High occupancy vehicle lane or car pool lane.
BOB: No. I drive by myself, so I can’t take advantage of that.
MAN: Yeah me too! But you know it saves me like 15 to 20 minutes on my way to work in the morning.
BOB: Isn’t that illegal?
MAN: Yeah, but there’s never cops out there. What, are you afraid you’re going to get a ticket?
NARRATOR: This man doesn’t care that his actions are illegal and could result in a traffic ticket if he were to get caught. This is a cue that he is in his rebellious Child Attitude State.
The Child Attitude State has four parts. The Natural Child likes to have fun and have a good time. It assumes little responsibility. The Adaptive Child conforms to the rules and adapts to situations when necessary. The Rebellious Child doesn’t care about the rules: it does whatever it wants to. The Little Professor likes to manipulate people and events to make them work the way it wants them to work.
If you could read the mind of a person in the Child Attitude State, you would probably hear things like:
"If it weren’t for this guy, I would be there already."
"I need him to move out of my way."
"If you think that is nice, you should see my new car."
"Pull out in front of me and see what happens!"
WOMAN: We were this close to a crash. But it was my turn to go. What did she expect?
YOUNG MAN: Right as I go to pass the guy, the guy runs me right off the road. It is just like, what is this guy thinking? He could have killed me.
NARRATOR: OK. Check out this situation and see if you can identify which Attitude State is controlling his behavior.
MAN: What kind of dressing is this?
WAITRESS: It’s Italian, sir.
MAN: I ordered ranch. Didn’t you hear me say "ranch"? You should listen to people when they give you their order.
WAITRESS: I am sorry. I’ll get you another one.
NARRATOR: Which Attitude State is controlling his behavior? Parent? Adult? or Child?
When you’re acting, thinking, and feeling in terms of should’s and ought’s, do’s and don’t’s, always and never, like this guy was, you can bet that your critical Parent Attitude State is controlling your behavior.
The Parent Attitude State has both a positive and a negative side. There is the nurturing and protecting part of the Parent that watches out for the benefit of others. There’s also the critical, punishing part that thinks it knows what’s best for everyone else, and generally tries to teach another person a lesson.
Listening to someone in the Parent Attitude State might sound something like this:
"They should make a rule against that."
"Always check your blind spots."
"If I were you I wouldn’t go that way."
"Why don’t you exit on Main Street?"
Which Attitude State is in control in this situation?
WOMAN HANGING PICTURE: I would like to hang this picture right here. OK, to center it on the wall, the picture is 18 inches wide and the wall is twenty-four, so my center mark would be right here. Is that right? Let me re-check that. That would be twenty-four, so my center mark would be right there. Mark that spot. (Hammer sound) There we go. And that looks perfect. I love it!
NARRATOR: Which Attitude State is controlling her behavior? Parent? Adult? or Child?
Sure, the rational, problem solving behavior you observed there is the Adult Attitude State in good working order. The Adult Attitude State is the logical, rational decision maker. It is the "computer" that filters out the emotions and distractions. It makes decisions based on the facts and the probable consequences.
Listening to someone in the Adult Attitude State might sound something like this:
"The chances are we might run out of gas if we don’t fill up now."
"Let’s double check those statistics."
"What options do we have?"
"What is the best way to handle this situation?"
Let’s experience a driving situation and we’ll discuss how you might respond to it in each of your Attitude States.
Wow! This truck is really slowing things down.
OK. How do you feel about a situation like this? Frustrated and angry, calm and relaxed, or attentive and interested?
Being stuck behind a slow truck like that, you have reason to feel frustrated and angry. That is when it’s easiest to hook your Child or Parent Attitude State. But once hooked, either Child or Parent can take control of you behavior.
How would the Child or Parent Attitude State react to this situation?
What kind of actions or behavior would you see if they were in control?
Let’s stop and get your ideas about this before moving on.
Let’s return to the situation behind this slow truck and see how the driver reacts.
This scene clearly demonstrates how the frustration and inconvenience of driving behind a slow vehicle can cause a driver’s impulsive, reckless Child Attitude State to take control.
This driver overlooked several signs of danger that an Adult driver would have quickly identified.
Let’s rewind this scene and take another look.
Let’s see if you notice the important clues that could have helped this driver to make an Adult decision. Did you see this sign earlier? It warns us of a potential hazard ahead, but the driver might have missed it because his visibility was limited by the size and proximity of the truck.
This sign shows that the road will soon begin to curve sharply to the right, with a maximum safe speed of 15 MPH. OK, let’s continue.
The truck driver is waving to signal that it’s safe to pass, but the right curve ahead sign was our first clue that passing here would be a bad idea. However, the driver following the truck decides to pass anyway, disregarding a second clue to the danger of this situation.
Although the lane marking is faded, the driver should have been able to easily identify a solid yellow line on his side of the road, warning that passing in this location would be both dangerous and illegal.
If this driver had been in his Adult, he would have paid close attention to the warning signs around the roadway and disregarded the truck driver’s signal that it was safe to pass. His decision would have been to remain behind the truck until he could pass safely and legally.
This scene illustrates the potential for disaster that exists when a person allows the Child or Parent Attitude State to take control of their driving. By ignoring or missing the warning signs in his driving environment and attempting to pass on a blind curve, this driver came close to causing a head-on collision or other type of serious crash.
Each of these Attitude States has a different amount of risk that each is willing to accept. We all tend to make decisions and take chances based on our attitude at that time. So how much risk are you willing to accept?
Does risk acceptance change under different driving conditions?
Here’s one situation where risk acceptance changes. See if you can relate to it.
Many of us have experienced situations like this while driving. We generally drive the speed that we do because of the risk we associate with it.
Consider this situation. If you were late for an important appointment, would you speed or drive the speed limit? Take a moment to think about that before we continue.
We’ve seen how our three Attitude States are each a set of feelings, ideas, and attitudes that affect behavior. Which Attitude State is responsible for effective driving behavior? Parent? Adult? or Child?
Effective driving behavior comes from the Adult Attitude State, which involves: identifying critical elements in the driving scene; predicting potential conflicts; deciding on the best use of available space and time; and executing those decisions on time and in a precise manner.
We refer to this as the IPDE strategy. Let’s make sure you understand how the IPDE strategy for rational problem-solving works.
Adult attitude behavior involves gathering and processing information.
You can identify the narrow street, the cyclist, another car approaching, and a parked SUV.
It involves estimating and predicting probabilities.
You should reasonably predict in this case that your vehicle, the cyclist and the oncoming car will all reach the narrow spot at the same time.
An Adult attitude sometimes means choosing a response that may be different from your initial intention.
The Adult approach here is to decide to slow down and pull over so the oncoming car can pass the cyclist before you get there. That’ll separate the risks, so you can handle them one at a time.
And it means executing your decisions accurately and on time.
Remember that you can’t completely get rid of the Parent or Child Attitude States. We don’t want to eliminate them. We just want to keep them under control. Remember that attitude controls behavior. What might your behavior be like if your Child Attitude State were always in control of your personality?
Well, you probably wouldn’t feel guilty about doing things that were rude or that could hurt others.
OK. Now suppose your Child Attitude State were blocked. How would you think and act?
Being all Adult and Parent, but not Child, would probably make you pretty dull. Without your Child Attitude State, you wouldn’t laugh very much. You probably wouldn’t even smile much. The point is, you must keep your fun-loving and impulsive Child under control.
In life and on the roads there are many things that can hook your Child Attitude State, which can take control of your behavior and cause trouble. The key is to recognize when that happens and find your Adult, especially when behind the wheel.
To summarize, we’ve learned that we all have three Attitude States incorporated into our personality. These Attitude States developed from past events in our lives, what we observed, and how we felt about them.
As young children, we often responded emotionally to negative situations. And we learned from the example set by our parents or guardians how to react at various times. These child or parent behaviors can resurface when we encounter similar situations as adults.
All three Attitude States are important to a well rounded personality. Our behavior, especially behind the wheel, is most likely to be effective and successful only when our Adult Attitude State is in control.
Many things in driving can bring out your Child or Parent, but as long as you keep your Adult Attitude State in control, you’ll be able to say to yourself, "I’m OK behind the wheel."