So we're delighted to be back with season 10 of the podcast. Yep. And I'm really happy to introduce our first guest of the season who we have been trying to get on and not managed to for various reasons ever since we started. So our guest today is Dr. Adam Asal. Who is a human factors researcher and consultant, and he recently completed his PhD on the impact of driving anxiety on driving performance and skills. So welcome Adam.

Thank you so much for having me. Finally,

It seemed so long ago, um, when we first met.

For sure. I think we met in a conference and then we obviously got each other's contact details and then I was meant to be on like two years ago or something like that, and then everything went haywire and now I'm back. So it's all good.

Yeah. No, it's great. Fantastic. And I'm sure the work, the weight is gonna be worth it because of course your research is finished now, so that's the Yeah, that's the best bit. It's, it's so congratulations for actually finishing it as well. You know, that's a, that's a massive project.

It was, it was, um, four studies and a literature review, so yeah, it was, it was a lot.

So I, I'm, I'm always interested in this question. So what was the reason that you chose to do this particular subject for your thesis?

Yeah. So that is a, a quite a personal question for me, which might be a bit odd. I started my PhD journey based on my mom. So, um, my mom had a t-bone collision, in, in, uh, Lester. And ever since that moment, she actually stopped driving for about a year. But since, since that moment she constantly kept looking on her right hand side and I was wondering why is she doing that ever since the accident? She was like, constantly, you know, making those adjustments. I was like. Then, then maybe something to do with the accident that's causing her to constantly look. so I asked my mom, you know, why do you keep looking there? She's like, I, I'm just constantly worried that, you know, somebody's gonna hit me again. so I was like, okay. And I realized because she's constantly looking that way, maybe she's not paying so much attention to the, to the front anymore. So I started thinking. This could be actually affecting her performance, her driving performance, and how can I, as a researcher in my background, in my master's as well, how can I help my mom overcome this problem that she had? so that's kind of where the idea of. Driving anxiety came in and the idea of the performance, uh, I knew, obviously my mom is, is a mature driver. She's very, she's very skilled, so I knew maybe it wasn't affecting her skills so much, but mo mostly the performance in terms of perception. Uh, but I wanted to obviously tackle, maybe it's affecting the skills maybe for, you know, novice drivers as well. So that's why the title came about driving anxiety, performance, and skills.

Yeah, I love that. I really love that. And there we go. We've got a connection in common there because my mom also had an accident, but. Actually, and I was a child in the back of the car at the time, but actually my mom never drove again after that. So is your mom driving now?

Yeah. Yeah. So she's driving. It took about a year, year and a half to get back, uh, uh, behind the wheel. But yeah, she, she is driving now, she's driving to the same, I would say, the same level as she was before. so, you know, it's a, happy ending in the end, but, uh, I've heard so many from, from, from my participants, so many people who have actually taken the route where they stopped driving. Like completely. And uh, you know, that's where the, the different terms come through. Like you've got, driving phobia and then you've got driving anxiety and you've got driving fear. So, you know, that's where, that's where the first minefield comes in really.

So let, let's go there then That's, that's sort of like free. Yeah, what is the difference?

Okay. So the differences, in terms of the research that we have currently, prior to my thesis, it was all over the place. driving anxiety, driving fia, driving, fear were being mixed up as terminologies throughout all the research that I was looking at, and I was, I'm looking at maybe 50 papers here, so, and I'm. Each of those terms, you know, carry different weights. So, I've kind of figured out that driving anxiety is more, you know, pre, pre the situation, you are worrying about those situations a lot. driving fear kind of comes after, so after the, the negative event, then the fear response comes in and then you get, you know, that jump and then you've got driving phobia is where a certain situation basically stops you driving altogether. Um, and that is where you're just absolutely petrified of driving. Don't really call it driving fear, but I call it like basically being petrified. It's where you do not want to go near a car again, typically people with driving phobia don't even really wanna be, um, you know, passenger in the car as well. But, my focus primarily was on driving anxiety because I wanted to see if there was a, a way of people coming back to driving or, you know, getting back to the same level that they were. So, in terms of driving anxiety, there's like different angles of it or different areas. when I was looking at driving anxiety, we had different, so we had, uh, driving cognitions that were affected, driving behavior that could be affected. driving avoidance to some degree of, you know, there's a certain anxious situation that people are scared of. Maybe they'll, you know, take. Multiple right turns instead of that one left to make it easy on themselves. Um, and then general anxiety, which could be linked to it. But as you'll see through my research it, we thought it linked and then it kind of didn't link through the models that we were developing. So that's kind of where we're at. So my, thesis, we created a, a definition of driving anxiety. And that. Really is a feeling of tension or unease in response to an anticipation of a potentially threatening but not guaranteed driving event. That's obviously very critical because anxiety and fear are separate there. Um, the feeling of unease is linked to a range of intrusive or distressing thoughts, and that's the cognition side of things and negative driving behaviors, which is obviously the behavior side of things. And this could lead to temporary avoidance. When I mentioned my mom, she only stopped driving for about a year, year and a half. Um, and that's the temporary avoidance that I'm talking about in this definition. Uh, but this critically, this definition does not make assumptions on driving performance. This is only talking about driving anxiety because I didn't wanna link negative performance with anxiety because if anxiety for some reason actually maybe, you know, it could improve performance in terms of vigilance or anything like that, I did not wanna link that negative performance with it. So that's, uh, that's my little definition of driving anxiety.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. As researchers, we always kind of like, you know, drop what we, what we think our research is all about. We, it's, um, what, what's that? What's that term? It's like imposter syndrome. I had imposter syndrome through the entirety of my PhD. I was like, am I good enough? Am I good enough? So, yeah, that's still creeps in a little bit.

That's brilliant though. That was really, and I think that's a really good way to like the fear and the anticipation is, you know, are they linked? Aren't they linked? That's a great, yeah. And 'cause anxiety is all about that. Worrying about stuff that hasn't happened yet, things that might happen, and there's always this, balance isn't there, between Could it happen? Well, yeah, maybe, but how likely is it to happen? Well, not that likely. And so yeah, it's always that it could. It probably, it, it probably won't, and in most cases it won't. So yeah, that's, that's exactly what anxiety is all about, isn't it? It's that scenario making and, and it's how much we believe it as an individual.

absolutely.

what, what sorts of thoughts did you see typically, um, when you were doing your research?

So, with the anxious drivers specifically, we, it's exactly like you said. Um. We've got those, you know, anticipation of those kind of worst case scenarios. And that's exactly what I found with my anxious drivers. people constantly worrying about, you know, if there's a bus is a part, uh, pedestrian going to walk right at right in front of that bus and are they gonna hit that, that pedestrian? Is a car going to hit them from the side? If they go into a roundabout, are they gonna be hit from the right hand side even though it's their right of way? It's all those little things, a zebra crossing with someone gonna run on a zebra crossing while you know they're gonna go. so it's all those worst case scenarios where you know, there's going to be danger, there might be loss of life. And that's what my participants are constantly thinking about. and that's really interesting from a cogniti. Psychological cognitive perspective because as we know, with cognition, we only have a finite amount of space in our memory. And if you are constantly thinking about those worst case scenarios and they're constantly running in your head, that is taken up space in your memory. So how much space do you really have for the actual tasks that you're doing? I think one of the, so I coined the term alternative reality of attention in my first study where I, it was basically like the participants, young, anxious drivers, they were having a reality in their head where all the worst things could happen. And PA in parallel to that is the real reality where things are not happening, but they're constantly seeing these things happening. So that is really interesting because you might. Even think that because they're predicting, or, you know, basically are predicting all of these hazards that are happening, maybe they're actually gonna be good at hazard perception, uh, or maybe even better at hazard perception than, you know, the typical driver. so we can d dig into that in my third study, but that was like one of the little nuggets of ideas of, oh, this might be a really interesting thing to look at. Um, but yeah, just going back to the question. Definitely those worst case scenarios were the key forefront of my participants.

Yeah, always imagining that the worst is.

Yes.

Astro and you know, you, you're starting to think about, you know, if I step out the door, is it gonna rain? You know, those four? So even before you, you know, it's a nice sunny day, it just rain. You know, you're gonna be struck by lightning and absolutely drenched, you know, it's the cartoon sort of scenario, isn't it? Yeah.

It is funny that you mentioned catastrophizing. That is one of my sub themes in the paper. So catastrophizing was definitely one of those things. And just going back with the, so my definition of driving anxiety is very much the driving experience, not necess, I wasn't necessarily looking at. You know, opening the door, is it gonna rain, kind of thing. But while driving, is it gonna rain? Am I gonna slide off the road kind of thing? Or if there's a, you know, a knocking sound in the engine, is my car gonna break down immediately? Kind of situations, you know, those kind of things. Yeah.

So I suppose from a driving instructor's point of view, which is, which is me. So conducting all these questions and tests potentially with your students and nervous drivers, was it done as a. Like a question and answer. Was it done actually in a car moving car? Was it done on a simulator? How did you get around those sort of, situations and questions?

Okay. So, uh, for the first study it was purely an interview scenario. So I created a interview schedule based on the literature review that I did, and I ran through basically 14 or so questions using a semi-structured interview format. But my PhD is quite unique where it looks at mixed methods. So, um, for the first study, again, it was, uh. Interviews. The second study was a large scale psychometric model that I tested. The third was an experimental model where I looked at skin conductant responses, basically people sweating and the eye movements to see whether they could, uh, you know, uh, anticipate the hazards. And then finally I did do a driving simulator with an anxious or non route that I created myself. So those were bespoke. Um, the, the experimental and the driving sim were all bespoke situations, so we had the raw footage, but because of the story of the PhD, I identified certain anxious situations and I, uh, isolated those and then made those as, uh, eclipse, uh, video clipse. And that's what the participants were watching to invoke that sense of anxiety. So, yeah.

There isn't another piece of research like this is there? Adam? No.

As a PhD, always the first. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really important that we say that because. In the research world, there isn't very much about driving anxiety. So in the research world, every, everybody goes off looking at personality traits and risky driving behavior. And it's much more around that road safety element, isn't it? And if you are looking for things around driving anxiety, driving confidence, most of that research hasn't been done in the uk, has it? It is mainly been done, um, New Zealand.

New Zealand and Australia are the two main people. My, my idols are basically from there. Jo, shout out to Joanne Taylor. She is basically the pinnacle of my entire PhD, so

And actually that's the name that you see on all the research is Taylor. And then whatever year it's been done. Yeah, absolutely. So this really is a very unique piece of research, and you had to start at the beginning, didn't you? To, to create that definition in the first place.

Absolutely. Um, uh, but we, I got a caveat that obviously with p with a PhD you are still looking at the previous research, so you do get your ideas from bits and bobs. So obviously, like I said, Taylor is a massive inspiration to me. But then you got Stevens as well. Um, she was amazing. She did a lot of, stuff on, cognitive driving, so, uh. They would actually take somebody on a drive and then do a, like a, basically a cognitive walkthrough of what they were saying and what they were thinking. And I kind of use those kind of ideas as well. So, uh, yeah. And, uh, I think Cane is another one for my skin conduction responses. So you get your ideas from a lot of, you know, seasoned researchers in the field. And I, I do wanna say, you know, they're all inspirations to me, so,

Yeah, lovely. And that is the point of research, isn't it? Is constantly building on the work of others and taking it forward so we've looked at the cognitive aspects of, you know, what you've done and how people have looked at it. Um, but did you notice any behavioral changes? Because again, from a driving instructor's point of view, we noticed the people change and then their behavior change as an, as a result of that. So what was the findings for yourself?

Yeah. Okay. So if we're looking at performance and behaviors now, two of my studies are really integral to that, and that is study three and four, which is the experimental has a perception study, which is three. And then the driving simulator study, which is four. So with, uh, study three, 'cause this is the constant terminology that I'm using 'cause I'm still in the PhD still. With study three, it was again, hazard perception. I had three conditions. I did anxious, hazardous situations where my video clips were all anxious situations with a hazard thrown in. The second one was non-hazardous anxious situations to see if the anxious situation itself. Leading to some sort of anxiety and then you had a control situation, which is very boring driving. Should be no anxiety and show no hazards whatsoever. and I try to measure anxiety in two different ways that, again, skin conduction responses, which is like the objective way of trying to measure anxiety, but it has been used to measure other things like. Fear and, and things like that. So I'll talk a little bit about that in detail later. And then obviously self-report, just asking them how anxious did you feel after watching that video clip? so obviously looking at the hazard perception area, that is all, you know, um, the first condition, just hazards and an, and, and anxious situations. from an anxiety point of view, there was no difference in hazard perception. SC d uh, scores between anxious and non anxious drivers. Now that's really, really interesting 'cause obviously I mentioned in the first, the first part where, you know, anxious drivers might not have any difference with their perception skills, or they might improve because of, you know, the constant what if situ situations. Um, and we found no differences, which means that the anxious drivers are equal in skill level for hazard perception. And I think that is, although. In research, we're always looking for a difference. I think that is one of the most important findings of my research because it's really giving anxious drivers hope that actually you can perform to the same level as everyone else. And that is, you know, amazing because it's kind of the, the anxiety is really more in their head rather than objectively being shown. And I, so that, you know, key point there is, you know, you are as good, you are enough, you are very, you can drive. It's not a problem. So another thing that we found interesting was in terms of experience. So I was looking at obviously novice and experience drivers, as another kind of subcategory. And I I did find that experience drivers were, you know, were better, had better response rates than novice drivers. And obviously that is a, you know, a very classic response that we expect and it's something that we found in all of our previous research. So that tells us two things. One that. Anxiety is its own concept and own precept. It's not really being affected by the, the experience, but also my clips actually are being verified by previous research. So it's, the clips are good, which is always something I was really worried about. so I would just wanted to mention that too. so yeah, experienced drivers were be able, were able to react faster to those, uh, hazards than the novice drivers. In terms of, like I mentioned, the skin conduction responses and the, self-report anxiety measures. Now, I did find that obviously the hazard anxious situations were in were high in anxiety on the self-report that was then followed by the non-hazardous anxious situations and the controls. And each of those had a, a main effect. So that basically means that there was a significant difference between each of those. And that is really important 'cause that's actually saying that the anxious situation is impacting the anxiety levels and, but it also is saying that the hazard itself is also increasing the anxiety. So that is really interesting from a self-report point of view. Now, when I was looking at the, SCRs, their skin conduction responses, I actually found no difference at all between anxious and non anxious drivers. And that was really interesting 'cause I thought, okay, I was trying to measure anxiety objectively and nothing was happening. But when I looked a little deeper in the data, I found that the peaks of SCRs, which is uh, basically a little line that shows a response that occurred after the hazard. So it's a response to the hazard and I'm thinking what I was thinking at the time, that could be actually driving fear rather than driving anxiety. 'cause it's a response to the hazard rather than an anticipatory response. Um, but. That is obviously just a theory. I, I more research needs to be done in that area because obviously I was focusing on driving anxiety, not driving fear. so yeah, that's my little spiel on the experimental stuff. And then, sorry to keep harping on about it. But then going on to the driving sim stuff, um, we actually found that anxious drivers did stall more and they did hesitate more. So that was really interesting. We didn't find a performance difference in the ex experimental, uh, study, but we did find a difference in the driving sim and that could be due to the methodologies. So for the experimental, obviously you're just watching a video and you're just pressing a space bar to measure the response. With a driving simulator, with all the complex controls of a driving simulator, you're using a lot more of your cognitions and lot, a lot more of your skills, and that is where we found that. Yeah. Um, anxious drivers, no matter whether in the anxious or non-anxious situation, they did stall a lot more, than the, than the non-anxious drivers. And the thing with that is, obviously that is having an impact on their performance to some degree, but I always say that stalling is not really a massive issue. You can always train yourself to get out of that kind of behavior, that, that negative behavior, and it's not, you know, causing massive risk or, or massive safety issues on the road. Um, because you're, when you're stalling, you are typically already stopped. You can't really stall while driving. In a sense, with the hesitation stuff, yeah, you may, you may cause a, you know, someone might beep at you behind you, but unless, and to be honest, you are in a safe situation. You are, you are stopped again. So. Those performance issues are there, but they're not to, you know, the extent that we are worried about them. And, you know, with the introduction of electric cars and automatic cars and things like that, you know that that stalling issue might, you know, dissipate in the future anyway. And as long as, you know, you feel confident in your driving, you might even reduce that hesitation.

Yeah. Love it. And that fits with a lot of what we see and talk about. Anecdotally. So, I mean, listeners on here know that I regularly talk about the fact that I'm an expert at stalling. I don't actually mean I'm great at stalling, but what I, you know, I'm, I, I stall and then I get going again. I barely notice there might be a, a little word said. but you know, that's it. Stalling is a normal part of driving and experienced confident drivers stall regularly as well. And it's exactly what you said, it's about that, just accepting that as part of driving and and carrying on. And yes, if you were stalling at 70 miles an hour on a motorway, which I think you'd have a job to do that, but you know, then that's maybe a different scenario to stall in when you're. Uh, a junction, uh, a junction or a traffic light. 'cause like you say, you are, you are already stationary, aren't you? And I love that, that, that really what you're doing is you're, you are splitting things out. We often say to the individuals who, who approach us, we often find ourselves looking through, the information they've given us and saying, driving skills aren't the problem. You haven't mentioned driving actually as a problem. Everything you've said. But very rarely have you said that I have a problem changing gears or steering or any of those things that you have to do to make a car move. And so I love that you've sort of, you've, you've taken the driving out and you've also, with that has perception. You're saying your skills are there the same as anybody else. So actually it all comes back down to the way you are thinking.

Absolutely, absolutely. Because the cognitions is the, is the biggest thing that's stopping people or, or people who have driving anxiety. It's not, if we can target those cognitions we'll be absolutely fine. And obviously there's multiple ways of doing that, just more driving training. you maybe even, uh, this is an idea that I had and, uh, it didn't come into fruition with the PhD, but maybe a postdoc is, you know, using virtual reality, exposure therapy. Maybe that's one way of doing it as well. Just for people who are really don't want to drive on the roads just yet, let's get 'em into a really controlled environment where they feel safe. And they can practice that, those skills, uh, and, and improve their performance, and obviously then get back onto the road safely. So yeah, that's another idea that I'm hoping to jump on at some point.

That was the very first thing you said to us when we met at that conference, Adam, you came up to us and you said, do you think about potentially using virtual reality for driving anxiety? And we stood there and we went, yeah, we think it'd be great.

Yeah. Yeah. absolutely. There are, there are a few, um, so obviously there's, there's the idea of gamifying research. There are a few games that with, because of the high level of simulation, you could potentially use those. So like I, I'll give you one example of city car driving is one where I was experimenting on my rig here on using, you know, an Oculus headset. Then driving in that kind of situation. And it actually is quite good because it gives you like an error report at the end as well, so you can actually see which errors you are doing and then obviously try and train to mitigate those errors. So that's one idea I'm giving away for free if anyone wants to try it.

I love it. I love it. I like the thing about where the anxiety came in after the hazard,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, I wouldn't call that anxiety, I would call that fear.

and that's the fear that

That's the fear. Yeah. So, because obviously you've got that jump response and that's the fear coming in, and that's what that is. Again, theoretical. I, I, I can't for definite say that it is fear, but it could be.

So they've dealt with the situation and then have the thoughts, well, what would've happened if if I didn't break? Or, yeah, I, I love that. Yeah. That sort of like, it happens, you get that Oh, moment. Hmm. Which creates a, you know, a, a whole set of chemical responses in the body, doesn't it? Yeah. And then as soon as you get that jolt, that set of chemical responses that, um, I mean it might not quite be fight flight fear, but a sort of startle, anything along those lines, then. Thoughts then go on to, to interpret that your thoughts interpret your physical response and catastrophizing.

absent. So what you are talking about is basically that, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy, that loop kind of scenario. That is the kind of the problem obviously. In my research, we couldn't really look at that because that is requiring, you know, a longer drive. But uh, on a long drive, if you constantly have those, those anxious situations or you have those anxious thoughts on a loop, that may have an impact on your performance long term. 'cause obviously you are. You're scared. You're scared, you're scared. You're, you're anxious, you're anxious, anxious, and then all of a sudden you're like, I can't do this anymore. I'm gonna pull over, kind of, you know, situation. You do have, and I think, you know, that's one of the situations that I hear a lot from driving instructors where, you know, over the drive, then they need to take a break or something like that because the, the student is just too worked up. They're, they're okay at the beginning and then it just gets progressively worse. So we need a finer way of dealing with that. But that is something we can, yeah, we can work towards.

Well, that's exactly what I was gonna say. It's not normally the first, the first hazard that's the problem. It's what you after that.

yes,

In on what you should be doing looking forward. You're still in the past

the moment, absolutely. The alternative reality. Reality, yep.

I love, I love that I wrote that down when you said about that alternative reality. So you've got the anxious driver, they've got one reality going on in their head of what they're thinking and, and actually noticing all the hazards, all the bad things, all the things that could go wrong. And what they're not noticing is the, the real actual reality. Of how they're driving, how the car's moving, how you've got this sort of, almost community agreement on the road of people who are being predictable and you are being predictable and everything's working like it should do. And generally lots of the sort of like the blips, the little things that happen. Uh, generally everybody manages around that because it's sort of normal, a normal part of driving. So somebody who stalls or somebody who hesitates a bit or somebody who, is doing a different speed to the speed you want them to do or whatever it is, it, they're all normal parts of driving and they don't normally cause major issues, do they?

No, absolutely. But just to jump on that fact, one of the major things that anxious drivers to, well, in my research found was other drivers cause their anxiety. It's the, I know you mentioned the idea of, obviously there is that predictability on the road, but it's when a driver does something unpredictable, that is when an actress driver really. Gets really anxious because they're like, I didn't predict that. What, what if I can't predict that again? Or what happens here? What happens there? So situations that lead that are with other drivers because OB obviously that worst case scenario, catastrophizing mentality. It's those situations that the are the scariest. So. One of the main things, obviously roundabouts a massive thing. Being in traffic is another one. Any kind of complex road where they're not familiar with the environment, and then you got other people involved, uh, uh, even something as small as tailgating, obviously somebody being right on your bumper, they're like, why? Why? Why are they not moving outta the way? What am I doing Something wrong? Um, and one of the, I, I really love this example, um, that one of my participants said, so you can't generalize it, but I did really like this example, is the fear of. Swapping insurance. So when you have that accident and you have to be in that face-to-face situation with the other driver and you think you're in the wrong and you feel like such a fool, and then you are swapping those in information and then you've, so, you know, some people have never had an accident, so it's their first experience of having that. I've heard that that one participant is like I wrote. That's the one thing that I hate more than anything else. It's just having to swap insurance details. Because obviously in the UK it's mandatory to have driving insurance, but other countries like New Zealand, Australia, or America, it's not mandatory to have that insurance. So some, you know, this could be a very localized thing that UK anxious drivers have of swapping the insurance.

I suppose that's almost a sort of like you're admitting it aren't, and you've gotta actually admit. It to someone which then causes that. I don't wanna be able to do that. Even if I am in the wrong, I don't want to do that because that shows that I'm,

It's that judgment. It's like they're judging me. They're judging that I'm a bad driver. It's that feeling of judgment and say that that feeling of judgment is also shown in the car as well. So if you are a driver and there's a passenger and you feel like you're not a bad, good driver, but you feel your passengers a good driver, you feel, then your passages are judging you as well, and then you've got that. That kind of scenario working as well as all the pedestrians running around in the street as well. It's just, so yeah, that, and that is one of the things, uh, yeah, just feeling that you're driving a more confident, more professional driver as a passenger. It's, uh, yeah, one of those things.

So we use the DCQ questionnaire, don't we? Yeah. And we noticed that you used

is questionnaire. My favorite. That is a, Taylor. Taylor worked on that. Taylor worked on that, so, yeah.

How, how did you find that? And you said it was your favorite. What was, how did that help you with that questionnaire?

So, so with those questionnaires, so those three questionnaires that I really used, uh, said DCQ, so the di driving cognition questionnaire, the D uh, the drafts, the driving riding avoidance scale. And the final one, which escapes my memory, I'll try to remember it, it's by Clapper Tower 2014. I remember the name. Can't remember the, Questionnaire.

behaviors questionnaire.

Driving behavior survey, driving behavior survey. That's clap and driving behavior questionnaire. That is a reason to tell. That is my, uh, dependent variable. So we've gone through all of all the variables now. So, um, so yeah, cognitions was driving cognitions questionnaire. DBS, which is a driving behavior survey. The driving anxious driving behaviors, dress, uh, driving, riding avoidance. That is the avoidance. And I did mention I did. Kind of measured, general anxiety as well, but that kind of fell away from the model. Um, and the reason I love those, questionnaires is they're verified by the research community and we're measuring each like concept of driving anxiety. You're measuring the cognition, you're measuring the behaviors, you're measuring the avoidance. And again, tho that model of driving anxiety was then measured against driving error for the second study. And that is how I basically developed that model of. Does driving anxiety have, um, an association with driving error? The story of my entire PhD is really, it does have an impact, but only on the less risky errors and the less risky behaviors. Like I said, the stalling and the hesitations never, I'm going a hundred miles an hour in a 30 zone. It's never, never, never like that. So, like I said, because the risk is relatively low, we can, we can target it and we can, you know. Train those risks out and, and you know that that should give, uh, anxious drivers hope really.

Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, so it does have a small impact, but on the less risky side of things. So actually it's not necessarily in proportion, even with the anxiety. So there is, and we often say you. You can, you know, it is possible to change how you feel about driving Absolutely possible. so that's amazing to see that come out in a piece of research. Mm, it's brilliant. Yeah, it's really good. So there was a phrase you use, um, and it's to do with driving errors or driving mistakes, you know? and you mentioned slip errors.

Yeah.

What's, what's a slip error?

A slip error is when you do a behavior based against the, so it, you intend to do something, but it's something else really. Uh, and that, and those, again, are really minor things. So it's, like I said, it's the, the slip, a slip error would be stalling. You intend to, you know, get your foot off the clutch properly, tend put, but a bit of that gas in, but something just doesn't go right there. And you stall. It's not a mistake. A mistake is when the, the intention is wrong, where you think, oh, I should be pressing the brake instead of the clutch. Kind of, that's a mistake. A a slip error is when you are, everything's right. You're on the, you're on the clutch. You are, you know, you're doing everything right, but you just kind of slip a little bit and that causes the. Issue in performance. So that, that's the difference between a slip and a mistake. And then a violation obviously is when you're intending to, you know, just go zone. Um, and obviously drivers don't, don't typically tend.

I really like that terminology as well, so that that slip error because as soon as you say I've made a mistake, that actually brings with it a level of. It brings emotions as soon as you make a mistake, whatever the, 'cause, the emotion might be different for different people. For some people it might be shame. For some people it might be, concern. It might be anxiety, it could be all sort of disappointment. It could be all sorts of emotions. So making a mistake brings. Emotions. And when you bring emotions that takes up, that generally creates thoughts. So thoughts and feelings and behavior are all linked together when you change the terminology to, actually, I, I had a slip there, there was a slip error. It feels really neutral and it feels smaller and less emotional.

You said that's emotional? A hundred percent. Yeah. I a hundred percent agree with that. The, the emotion is what is driving everything here. Um, so. To, to kind of objectify it or we would, there is a opportunity of removing those kind of anxious, you know, anxious thoughts and feelings. 'cause you're looking at it from an objective, objective point of view, rather from an emotional point of view.

Yeah, I'm, can we pinch that? Is that okay?

Yeah. Take it, take it. You can have it.

There's two or three things we got today.

Two, three things. Yeah,

I'll reference you, Adam. It's fine. Whenever I

do. Yeah, absolutely.

I, I really, I really like that terminology that's another thing that we talk about is changing the vocabulary, changing the language that you use so that you get more specific because then you get the, uh, an emotion that is more relative to, to what you are talking about. And that's a really good example of that. Yeah, a hundred percent. That is really nice. It, it just like Trace says, it neutralizes it, doesn't it? It's, uh, it's good.

Yeah, I think it also, reduces the scope of the training as well, so you can then target the kind of training that you need to give somebody, rather than give somebody a general course that can, you know, take up X amount of hours. And for half of it, people feel like it's a waste of their time. You can just target the exact thing that people are struggling with. They feel valued. You've not, you've, they've saved time. You've saved time, you know, it helps the, the, in the long run.

That's exactly how we use the DCQ. It targets where people are, their thoughts and feelings are and affecting their behavior and that's really helps us. Target the questions we need to use or the, the practices that we are gonna use. So yeah, that, that definitely does. Yeah. And that suggestion of As an anxious driver, going to find somebody to help you out. But what you want is you don't want refresher driving lessons. because I mean, we, again, we hear this all the time, people, and I try a refresher, but the driving instructor just said, I could drive. It's like, yeah, well we all knew you could drive. Um, that wasn't the problem. but actually approaching somebody and say, I need some targeted training on stalling.

Yes,

I need some targeted training on parallel parking and, and actually it's not a refresher driving lesson, it's some targeted training on something that is maybe a common slip error

yes, yes, 100% that, that is exactly what I found in, in my research as well. Yeah, so because. Obviously the, the slip areas kind of go hand in hand with the anxious situations. And you just mentioned parking, I know it's parallel parking, but you mentioned parking. One of my participants really struggled with bay parking. So what they tried, what they ended up doing is they focused so much on the bay parking, they kind of forgot where everyone else was around them and the other, other cars and other possessions. So you've got that, you know, you've got that. One, one area, which is that hypervigilant. I'm seeing absolutely everything, even though my memory can't actually, you know, process it all. And then you've got the other area where I'm so focused on this one task that I am blind to everything else around me. So you and anxiety can impact, you know, that spectrum.

We could just talk, we could talk day about this, wouldn't we? We really,

absolutely. There'll be another Viva. I talked about this stuff for three hours in my Viva, so I can do it. I can keep going.

we just have you back for another one. Yeah. We might

By all

you.

Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm

Yeah. I'm thinking that actually because we've got a few of the guests that we've got invited in for the rest of the season, I can see how some of those guests are actually gonna, their topics sort of link in. Mm-hmm. Um, so maybe let's consider that having you back and it might mean you have to listen to all the other podcast episodes, Adam, so that you can then do a wrap up summary episode with us on the, it's called research. Yes.

Absolutely I could do that. It's not like I've done that for 10 years.

So, so I think that's probably quite a good place for us to, you know, think about wrapping it up. But before we do, Adam, is there anything we haven't asked you that you were thinking, I really want to talk about that, or I want to tell anxious drivers this.

I, I think we've kind of covered it all. If I'm honest with you, I, I, again, I just want to say the main message, which is anxious drivers, you can do it. You, your skills are exactly the same as everybody else. If you are stalling, if you are hesitating a little bit, that is absolutely normal and we can work on that. It's not the be all, be all, and end all of everything. And again, with my definition. If you are avoiding driving, it's absolutely temporary. We can, you, you will get back on the road and you will be fine. Uh, and I think that's my main message. And then, and that's my main message to my mom as well.

That's brilliant. How do people get in touch with you, Adam, how can people find you?

Um, so I do have a LinkedIn. So if you just search my name, uh, Adam Asal, PhD, my LinkedIn will pop up. You can message there.

Perfect. And we'll put that LinkedIn link in the show notes as well for people to find. Brilliant. So thank you so much. And like Tracy said, we could talk for ages on this and it's uh, it's so interesting. I love the research. I'm not a research person myself. I'm more the practical person. How does this work in real? But yeah, that's, it's been so interesting. Yeah, it's been great. And, it's just been great to talk to you about it and sort of like to have seen your journey over the last few years. So thank you so much for coming on and speaking today.

thank you so much. And, and sorry it's been, you know, a long time coming, uh, but I'm so glad to have finished the research. I can give you a full picture of how driving anxiety is impacting all of us or the people who are struggling with it. Right. Thank you.