Frills, Thrills, and Chills: Understanding Barriers and Facilitators of Safe Driving Among Young Male Drivers

In 2023 the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that more than 1.2 million people die each year globally as a result of car crashes, and additional 30-50 million are injured. Of these 69% are among people aged 18-59, males outnumber females on a ratio of 3 to 1, and 18% occur during the daily work commute. Of the 42,514 fatal crashes reported from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the non-fatal crashes reported from the Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS), 8% of fatal crashes, 12% of injury crashes and 11% of all police-reported motor vehicle crashes in 2022 were reported as driver distraction-related behaviors, defined as any activity which diverts the driver’s attention away from the task of driving. Quantitative studies have shown that these activities, including cell phone-related activities, interaction with the dashboard, eating and drinking, and interaction with passengers, are augmented by personally-experienced contributing factors such as stress, mood, personality, attitudes, and emotions, as well as external factors such as traffic situations and road environment. What they don’t address is barriers and facilitators of safe driving from the point of view of risky drivers, a gap we propose can only be bridged through qualitative methods. Using qualitative grounded theory research design (GT) and a social ecological theoretical framework, we conducted focus group interviews with young males 18-34 in order to understand precursor behaviors and contributing factors to distracted and risky driving. Participants for 16 semi-structured focus group interviews were recruited statewide in 4 geographic regions in a comprehensive non-probability bi-method recruitment strategy, a combination of convenience sampling and snowball sampling. Findings indicate that those interviewed believed that any distracted behaviors they participated in were only “defensive” in nature, the result of someone else’s behavior. This “othering” extended to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of behavior. Participants reported risks for distracted driving which included a deep emotional need for connectivity to friends, work and family, a lack of control over environmental distractions from entertainment, phone and passengers, and the presence of mood/emotion-related stressors such as lack of time, other bad drivers, work-related stress, and traffic rage. The grounded theory study concludes that a precursor social marketing intervention approach which addresses pre-driving behavior and mood and creates a calming “Zen Space” environment, including measures such as leaving early to allow more time for commute, preparing a pre-mix of calming driving music, presetting temperature, and navigation controls, and setting phones to do not disturb, might be an effective intervention.