Tag Archives: Emotions

May 18 2017

Shake Those Moody Blues

Driving Attitude

Your mental and emotional state can significantly affect your actions while driving. If you bring a bad attitude into the car with you, it will cloud your driving decisions. Stress and emotions can hijack your mind and you may find yourself unaware of your driving environment or over-reacting to another driver’s bad driving behavior.

Having a positive, courteous attitude, and driving with your own safety, as well as other’s safety in mind, is key to making safe driving decisions. When behind the wheel, put aside negative thoughts that enter your mind and concentrate on driving instead. If you ever feel like you are having a bad day, or you just can’t shake your problems, avoid driving until you feel better.

Jun 15 2015

All Shook Up

Driver Emotion

Driver impairment is not only caused by drugs and alcohol. Our driving is impaired anytime our ability to operate a vehicle is compromised. Because emotions can govern our behavior to a large extent, they too can diminish our driving capabilities. Emotional impairment can affect our ability to recognize risks and quickly react.

Here are some helpful tips to help regulate our emotions while driving.

  • Do not take the aggressive actions of other drivers personally.
  • Cool off when angry or frustrated.
  • Don’t drive when feeling upset, frustrated, depressed or angry.
  • Don’t have emotional conversations while driving.
  • Stay focused on the driving task.
  • Turn a negative driving situation into a positive situation.
  • Demonstrate the kind of courtesy you would like to receive from others.

Safe driving requires our focus at all times. When behind the wheel, try to ‘shelve’ problems temporarily. Instead, concentrate on the driving tasks at hand. If unable to do that, then it is best to wait to drive until our emotions are under control.