Impatience and time pressure: Subjective reactions of drivers in situations forcing them to stop their car in the road

Transportation research has shown that impatience and time pressure are determining factors for traffic rule violation and risky behaviour. However, the situations provoking impatience have not yet been investigated in depth. One purpose of this study was to examine how different road stops might increase impatience. Another purpose was to measure the effects of time pressure on impatience as a function of these situations. Forty eight participants viewed eight films, shot from a driver’s viewpoint, each ending with a situation in which the car had to stop in the road. Participants were invited to imagine that they were the driver, and asked to rate how their impatience evolved during the stops by moving a cursor. Guided imagery was used to induce time pressure in half of the participants. Our results indicate that impatience is a state of increased arousal and negative valence. A subtle appraisal process appears to determine when impatience is triggered and how it evolves during stops. In the current study both the triggering and the evolution of impatience were altered by situational features, especially stop-length estimates and emotions. Time pressure as a contextual or chronic factor was found to influence impatience.

► Innovative procedure to measure impatience as a function of time.
► Impatience of relaxed drivers is adjusted to the estimated length of the car stop.
► Drivers under time pressure demonstrate less variation in their impatience latencies.
► They give greater importance to contextual features in the second step of appraisal.
► In situations calling for empathy, impatience arises sooner in chronic time pressure.