Personality at the Wheel

As damage suits for personal injuries suffered in auto accidents increase in number and produce greatly swollen sums in settlement, many a U.S. lawyer has become as familiar with Gray's Anatomy as with Blackstone. Now he is likely to start studying Freud as well. Last week, as 1,800 members of the National Association of Claimants' Counsel of America met in Denver to bone up on medicine, they heard the clearest descriptions yet offered of the psychological types that are most, and least, likely to crack up their cars.

After a study of hundreds of young men at Lowry Air Force Base, two Denver psychologists, Dr. Wilbur C. Miller and Dr. John J. Conger, put together composite personality pictures of high and low-risk drivers. As might be expected, the low-risk driver shows less hostility toward the world in general, and especially to organized authority; he is more willing to obey the law unquestioningly.

But there are more subtle and less predictable differences. The low-risk driver's equanimity, reported the two psychologists, stems largely from the fact that he knows where he is going in life, as well as on the road, and how he intends to get there. He is more likely than the high-risk driver to take on faith his parents' religion. He is less imaginative, but more interested in questions of esthetics. His faults are usually an excessive need for conformity and to please others.

The high-risk driver's obvious faults are ill-concealed hostility lurking just below the surface, and an egocentric disregard for others' rights and feelings. Underlying these characteristics, say Drs. Miller and Conger, is dissatisfaction with his position in life and a lack of direction: he does not know where he is going, let alone how to get there. The high-risk driver is far more likely than others to act impulsively, and live in a world of fantasy.

The researchers found no physiological differences between the two types. Their blood pressures were in the same range, both at rest and under stress. In psychomotor skills (brake reaction time, vision, making split-second decisions), the high-accident men rated a notch higher than low-risk types -but in responding more quickly they also made more mistakes.

In sum, the lawyers learned, life with an imaginative, volatile, high-risk driver is likely to be more stimulating and interesting than with a conventional plodder -but also shorter.

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