Driving anger in Spain

Abstract

The present study examined the types of situations that cause Spanish drivers to become angry. The 33-item version of the Driver Anger Scale (Deffenbacher, Oetting, & Lynch, 1994) was used to investigate driver anger amongst a sample of 371 drivers. Confirmatory factor analysis showed the fit of the original six-factor model was satisfactory. In most of the subscales Spanish drivers reported similar levels of anger to that reported by drivers from other nations. Female drivers reported more anger overall and on three of the six types of driving anger (discourtesy, traffic obstructions and illegal driving). Individually, police presence, slow driving and overall anger were significant predictors of crash involvement (p < 0.05), even after the contributions of the background variables had been partialled out.