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Lifestyle Factors and Typologies: Their Relation to Risky Driving

NCJ Number
115993
Journal
Alcohol, Drugs and Driving Volume: 4 Issue: 3-4 Dated: (July-December 1988) Pages: 245-249
Author(s)
J E Donovan
Date Published
1988
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This discussion of three papers presented at a symposium held in 1988 notes that traffic safety has been increasingly integrated into the field of health behavior and health promotion and analyzes previous speakers' discussions of lifestyle variation and its relationship to risky driving practices, including drinking and driving.
Abstract
The notion of lifestyle has been widely used in the health promotion field for many years but is not gaining proponents in the traffic safety field. Dr. Swisher focused on the behavioral correlates of driving after the use of alcohol or marijuana, using eight criterion measures but excluding a wide variety of other risky driving practices. Swisher found impaired driving to be a component of a larger syndrome of problem behavior. Dr. Lastovicka's paper makes explicit use of the construct of lifestyles and found four types of young adults, characterized as Good Timers, the Well-Adjusted, the Nerds, and the Problem Kids. The Good Timers and the Problem Kids were the most involved in drinking and driving. However, all these groups of young men engage in enough drinking and driving behavior to be of concern from a public health standpoint. The paper by Dennis Donovan and others focuses on broad categories of risky driving and shows that high risk drivers vary in terms of personality, driving-related attitudes, and other factors. None of the papers examined social environment factors, such as perceptions of friends' attitudes, or determined the extent to which driving behavior is related to other health-related behaviors like exercise, diet, and sleep. Further research should also focus on developing frameworks that encompass both risk factors and protective factors relevant to risky driving practices. 18 references.