Acad. .41x11. & Pm. Vol. I?. pp 217-220 Pergamon Press Ltd., 1980. Printed in Great Britain

CAN ANYONE REWARD SAFE DRIVING?

PAUL M. HURST Traffic Research Section, Ministry of Transport, Wellington, New Zealand

(Received 20 November 1979; in revised form 29 January 1980)

Abstract-It is widely held that reward is better than punishment for shaping behaviour, yet it seems virtually absent from the learning situation for safe driving. This paper discusses why this is so, and why most attempts to introduce reward have been futile. Inadvertently, however, reward appears to have been introduced into the driving that is done by those who have been suspended or disqualified, in that they are rewarded for driving safely and inconspicuously. The good driving records shown by disqualified drivers after licence restoration suggests that a powerful learning mechanism is at work. Possible means are discussed by which this effect might be harnessed and be made to occur more generally in those who are learning to drive.

THEORY: REWARD vs PUNISHMENT

Even before the heyday of B. F. Skinner, it was generally agreed among learning theorists that reward works better than punishment. Yet in our driving statutes, which bristle with threats and punishments, reward is conspicuous by its absence. A little reflection, however, leads one not to be too condemnatory of the rule-makers, since that reward is not easily worked into the system at all.

Few would delude themselves that we could simply change the functions of enforcement officers so that, instead of being largely agents of punishments, they could be used to dispense merit badges of some sort for safe or courteous acts of driving. They could not begin to reach a significant fraction of drivers this way, and it is doubtful if the rewards would be very effective in the primary target group-the young males-who generally dislike traffic officers. Helping motorists with breakdowns is a rewarding act, and surely helps with public relations, but does not serve to motivate or reinforce specific acts of safe driving. Insurance rebates Iike no-claims bonuses are appropriate rewards for good behaviour, but they are so hopelessly delayed that it is hard to see how they could reinforce specific safe driving behaviours.

When appfied in the context of a driving course, one might hope that rewards could achieve the desired influence by serving as symbols of expertise. Even here, though, it is not easy to see how one can instil a motive to be a safe driver.

In teaching manoeuvering skills, there will probably not be any problems. If you are training your student skid control, for exampie, he will be highly motivated to learn, because this will enable him to take corners faster and perhaps some day even to outrun a traffic officer. But there is nothing very glamorous about simply being a safe driver because one goes out of his way to avoid trouble, primarily through defensive driving techniques, and this is the behaviour that we should most like to teach.

We begin to see then, that there are reasons to take a tolerant view of the politicians and bureaucrats who have failed to incorporate into the legal system even the fundamental principles of behavioral analysis. Their task is a difficult one for two fundamental reasons. The first is that it is hard to use reward to teach a person not to do something (like speeding, or drinking before driving) just as it is hard to use reward to train your dog not to chase cats. But it is even worse than that. When you are training your dog, you have certain advantages. The first is that you are smarter than the dog. The second is that you and the dog can probably come to a pretty good understanding about what is a reward and what is punishment. This is not easy to do when the basic values are largely antithetical. For our primary target group, speeding and drinking driving must enjoy some peer group approval (since they are done in a largely social context): strict observance of traffic rules is scarcely going to win admiration. Authorities are viewed with hostility. How, then, can the authorities administer socialty meanin~u1 rewards, when they are viewed as the enemy?

The answer is that rewards probably cannot be given, in any direct sense. It may stili be possible, however, to programme the system so that rewards occur, preferably without these

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rewards being seen as largesse distributed by a Ministry of Transport. To see how this might be accomplished, we must look at a phenomenon that is gradually becoming better understood: What might be called the Disqualified Driver Effect.

RECORDS OF DISQUALIFIED DRIVERS

Evidence is gradually accumulating that drivers who are disqualified for traffic offences tend to show improvement after licence restoration. The latest example is the California study by Hagen [ 19771, which compared a group of drivers disqualified for multiple alcohol offences with a “control” group who managed to escape disqualification through a legal loophole. As might have been expected, the escapees, who selected themselves by hiring lawyers and hence tended to have better resources than their cohorts, had better prior driving records than the disqualified group. However, they performed significantly worse, both in terms of crashes and convictions, during the first four years of the post-sentencing six-year follow up. Since the maximum disqualification was for three years and the usual was just one year, it is clear that beneficial effects seem to have out-lasted the period of disqualification. The lower crash involvement during the period of suspension may have been partly, or entirely, due to less driving being done: but the improvement after licence restoration suggests a learning effect.

Was this a simple example of the salutory effects of punishments in effecting reform? Did

the penalised group meekly sit out their disqualifications and then return to the road with the resolution to sin no more? Was this improvement in “attitude” sufficient to reduce their subsequent accident and conviction rates even though they were out of practice from one to three years? If so, it would seem likely a “first” in the history of penology that simple punishment had reformed a large group of offenders. A further consideration is that

Home1[1977] also found a positive effect for disqualification but not for imprisonment, suggesting no role for punishment per se. It has been amply established that many disqualified

drivers do not stop driving[Coppin & van Oldenbeek, 1%5; Paulsrude et al. 1975; Clay, 1977; Ingraham and Waller, 19771. This raises the chance for an alternative explanation to the punished-and-reformed concept, and that is that driving whilst disqualified is an effective way to learn defensive driving skills, since the disqualified driver is automatically “wrong” if he has an accident. This concept, which has also been suggested by Hagen[1977], emphasises threat as the major motivating influence, and indeed this must be the immediate stimulus that causes the safe driving (and probably reduced driving, as well). However, there are other considerations, heretofore overlooked, that make the effect more powerful.

MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF DISQUALIFICATION

The most obvious influence, as discussed above, is the threat of discovery, which creates an immediate incentive to avoid drawing attention to oneself through traffic law violations, accident involvement, or conspicuous driving. The disqualified driver knows that he will be in trouble if he has an accident, and that it will not matter whose “fault” it was. This creates a

frame of mind that is conducive to “defensive driving” but does not, by itself, induce anything beyond a temporary behaviour modification.

The second distinctive attribute of the disqualified driver is that he has an excuse for obeying the traffic laws. A young male who slavishly obeys every traffic regulation, including the speed limit, is surely going to be regarded as somewhat strange by his peer group. His masculinity may be called into question. But under disqualification, just driving at all becomes an act of derring-do, no matter how careful and lawful it is. One need no longer apologise for obeying the speed limit.

The third and perhaps most powerful influence is reward-reinforcement, in the psy- chologist’s sense. According to the Law of Effect, any act or behaviour that tends to produce a reward is likely to be repeated, and tends to become habitual. This principle seems to have been

pretty well understood even before Behavior Modification was invented. By simply complet- ing a trip, un-crashed and un-apprehended, the disqualified driver has achieved a state of well-being that goes far beyond any simple tension reduction. He has, by his own personal skill and daring, cancelled an oppressive and unjust punishment? He has voided the Court’s order and, at the same time, thumbed his nose in the face of Authority. And how was this state of affairs brought about? By the simple act of safe driving. So the act involved has been

Can anyone reward safe driving? 219

powerfully reinforced, and will therefore tend to become habitual, and will therefore tend to generalise to similar stimulus situations.

By now, it should be fairly apparent why disqualified drivers learn safe driving quickly. It should also be apparent that we might have difficulties if we attempt to capitalise on the phenomenon in developing rules for driver training and licensing. Namely, we can invoke a threatening procedure such as “lose your licence if you have a violation”, or “back to square one if you have an accident”, but this will not achieve anything like the Disqualification Effect because it consists of the menace only. To conjure up the other elements-excuse for legal driving, and the reward-reinforcement effect-will require greater subtlety.

IMPLICATIONS FOR LICENSING AND CONTROL

I am a little reluctant to go on, since it is going to sound Machiavellian. However, the cause is worthy, so let us see where we are led by the remorseless logic of the situation. Obviously, the second element-the excuse for legal driving--comes from the fact that one is already breaking one of the rules, in the case of driving whilst disqualified. Thus, we can hope to harness this effect by providing the driver with a rule to break. The last and most important element, reward-reinforcement, also seems to require that a rule be broken: preferably, a rule that is so perceived that it will give one a warm feeling of satisfaction to defy it. The latter requirement may not be a difficult one, considering how traffic laws seem to be regarded by our target population.

If we are to make the most of these movitational effects, it would be best to inject them as soon as possible into the learning process, hence preferably before full licensed status has been achieved. One way to do this would be to introduce certain restrictions on the newly licensed driver. For example, after having taken his first road test and exchanged his learner’s permit for a driver’s license, the young driver could be restricted for a certain length of time to daylight-only operation. Depending on the enforcement level, such a rule would be broken by some variable proportion of the target group. Hopefully, they would drive more carefully and more soberly than might otherwise have occurred. And perhaps those boys and girls who exhibit this devilishly daring behaviour are those who most need reinforcement for safe, defensive, inconspicuous driving.

Yes, indeed, they are also getting reinforcement for breaking the traffic law. In the attempt to make them teach themselves safe driving, are we justified in thus deviously encouraging unlawful behavior? If you believe that our target group will otherwise develop a genuine respect for the traffic law, then you have cause for concern. If you believe that our target group is unlikely in any case to develop such a respect until they have reached greater maturity-if you think that they only obey speed limits, etc. when they are afraid of being apprehended-then you may not be so concerned about the moral aspects.

Supposing, then, that one is convinced that the above thesis is correct-that driver disqualification works for all the wrong reasons, and that similar restrictions like daylight-only might have a similar effect. Is this anything more than an academic exercise, given the manifest impossibility of a politician advocating a law whose benefits lie more in its breach than in its acceptance? Obviously, the answer is that such a law could never be introduced on such a basis, but might be easy to justify on face value. It is easy to show, for example, that young drivers have more accidents than older ones and that all drivers have more accidents per mile when driving after dark. There may in fact be no dangers that are unique to the young driver-night time combination, but rather simply a multiplicative risk function, This need not concern us too much, since it is easy tnough to demonstrate a greater incremental risk with night-time operation in the inexperienced driver, and this should suffice. Other restrictive alternatives would have to be justified on similar bases.

If this approach to traffic safety sounds devious, that is doubtless because it is, but I am convinced that its basis is sound. I would even be willing to go further, and to say that the goals and values of certain societal groups are antithetical, and that we have not got on very well in ‘our attempts to reconcile them. It is as if you and the dog could not agree on what is a reward and what is punishment: Until you do something about this, you are not going to get on very far with your dog training. You have two alternatives. You can try to teach the dog to look at things from your point of view, which is like getting a young racing enthusast to see the virtues

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of a 55 mph speed limit. Or you can try looking at things from the dog’s point of view. You can give the young motorist a chance to outwit the traffic officer by driving safely.

REFERENCES

Clay T. R., Evaluation of the Phoenix ASPA, DWI school and alcohol programs. A paper presented at the 1977 National AIcoholism Forum, San Diego, California, 1977.

Coppin R. S. and van Oldenbeek G., Driving Under Suspension and Revocation: A Study of Suspended and Revoked Drivers Classified as Nealiaent Ooerators. Reuort No. 18. California Deoartment of Motor Vehicles. Sacramento. 1965.

Hagen R. E., &ectiveneb”of license suspension or revocation for dhoers convicted of multiple driving-under-the- influence oflences. Report PB-278179, California, State Department of Motor Vehicles, Sacramemto, California, 1977.

Homel R., Sanctions for drinking and driving. Paper read at 7th Int. Conf. Alcohol, Drugs and Tr~fic Safety, Melbourne, 1977.

Ingraham W. S. and Wailer J. A., Alcohol-Impaired Driving License Suspension, and Transportation Needs During Intoxication or Suspension Among Alcoholics. Crash Report IV-I, Waterbury, Vermont, 1977.

Pa&rude S. P. and Klingberg C. L., Driver License Suspension: A Paper Tiger. Research and Technology Division, Department of Motor Vehicles. Olympia, Washington, Report 032, 1975.