Investigating the Role of Stress and Anxiety in Drivers' Behavior

Considering the industrialization of human societies and consequently the expansion of cities, we are seeing an increase in stressors and, as a result, anxiety and mental illness and depression among different societies; attention to the role of environmental factors as an effective factor in behaviors and actions of humans and the difference between people's ability to control and respond to internal and external stimuli and the impact of these excitements in driving accidents makes it important to study the role of human factors, especially the role of stress and anxiety. Therefore, the use of psychological tests as one of the most important tools for the study of the diagnosis and prevention of stress and anxiety and as a criterion for determining the mental health of people in the community is of great importance. The present article analyzes the data from the questionnaire to investigate the role of stress and anxiety in the driving behavior of male students of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology of Karaj Azad University. This research is a descriptive-survey based on the purpose and the implementation method. The statistical population of this research is 400 male students of technical and engineering faculty of Karaj Azad University in 2015. According to Morgan table, 200 of them were selected by simple random sampling method. The 21 item DASS questionnaire and 28 item GHQ inventory were also considered as a tool to collect information from this research. Based on the results, 77.2% of the subjects in the DASS test had normal-grade stress, 16% had mild and normal stress, and only 4.8% of the students were severely stressed. Regarding the comparison of the two accident and non-accident motorist groups using the general health test for the determination of the health status of the subjects, 78% of the subjects scored less than 23% and 22% of the subjects had scores higher than 23, that is, 22% of the population in the study had a more urgent need for advise services. On the other hand, among factors of anxiety, depression and stress, 63% of stress caused driving. The findings indicate that stress is one of the main factors in accidents and this implies the need to pay more attention to psychological factors that are one of the most important factors in the occurrence of accidents.