Spanish drivers and their aberrant driving behaviours

Abstract

One of the most commonly used frameworks for investigating the relationship between self-reported driving behaviour and crash involvement is the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ). However, in spite of the fact that Spain has a relatively large road safety problem (annually more than 5000 people die and over 150,000 are injured in traffic accidents), only one study could be found using the DBQ to measure aberrant driving behaviour in this country. In addition that research solely reported the frequencies of the different driving behaviours they measured. The current research attempted to fill this gap by administering a translated Spanish version of the DBQ to a sample of drivers in Spain. Although factor analysis produced a four factor solution, there were a number of departures from the expected factor structure. The most unusual finding was that the first factor contained a mixture of lapses and errors. This may indicate that either some of the meaning was lost in the translation into Spanish, or that the distinction between these two factors may not apply to Spanish drivers. The second factor was a strong violations factor and was constructed of violations and aggressive violations to do with getting somewhere in a hurry. The third factor once again confirmed that interpersonal violations are a separate entity from the other aggressive violations, meaning that this research did not support the “aggressive violations” factor. The fourth factor had very low internal reliability and contained only three lapses. However, in agreement with previous research, it was the violations factor which was predictive of crash involvement after the contributions of the demographic and descriptive variables had been partialled out.