Driving anger in Argentina

Abstract

Angry driving is a risk factor for traffic crashes and injuries, however it has been understudied in Latin American countries. The main aim of the present study was to translate and adapt the short form of the Driving Anger Scale (DAS; Deffenbacher et al., 1994) to the Argentinean Spanish. We also included further situations linked to bad conditions of the road network in Argentina. The sample of the study included 988 Argentinean drivers from the general population. Exploratory and confirmatory analysis supported a five-factor structure which were named as infringements by another driver (α = 0.91), progress impeded (α = 0.77), hostile gestures (α = 0.95), police presence (α = 0.67) and poor road infrastructure (α = 0.84). The DAS in the Argentinean driver’s context obtained good psychometric indexes. We also found effects of gender, age, traffic violations and crash involvement on DAS and its subscales. Our findings are valuable as long as they provide information that has not been studied intensively in low and middle-income countries.