Psychobabble is common these days; we borrow terms from psychology and pepper our discussions of human behavior with them, even though they are often used misleadingly.
An early example was "defensive" driving, which in the 1960s developed to mean driving as if nobody but you had any responsibility for good driving or accident avoidance. The result was that everybody, counting on the other guy to be defensive, began to drive like a maniac, a trend that accelerated when the insurance companies invented "no-fault" insurance. We seldom hear either "defensive" or "no-fault" any more (insurance companies seem to have gone to the "all-fault" concept) but the damage has been done.
Now, "aggressive" driving has become a common term. I grit my teeth when I hear this one; it is really used, not to denote certain kinds of driving, but to pin a negative label on the drivers themselves. Checking my thesaurus for "aggressive," I find terms like these: warlike, angry, objectionable, combative, cocky, violent. Tsk, tsk.
Possibly safety experts and bureaucrats trying to reduce bad driving practices, or drivers who think driving is an activity that need not absorb their full attention, find some psychic benefit in labeling others on the road as evil or immoral but it's sloppy thinking. The term backhandedly implies that people who cause accidents by puttering along the interstate at 40 mph, chatting on their cell phones, weaving back and forth from lane to lane, stopping dead at a turn while they read their GPS screen, or just can't maneuver their SUVs into or out of a parking space -- those must be the morally "good" drivers. I guess I'd have to call those folks "passive-aggressive" drivers.
In fact, the best drivers are aggressive, in a different meaning that can also be found if you look far enough in the thesaurus: self-assertive, vigorous, active, strong in spirit. It struck me on a recent cross-country driving trip that this is the only cogent sense of "aggressive driving." Being aggressive in this sense is a positive thing on the road. It means you're paying attention to what you're doing, actively assessing dangers and road conditions, maintaining a fairly constant speed on highways (even uphill), taking full advantage of opportunities (an extra 10 mph on the speedometer can mean an hour saved on a long trip, and switching lanes can get you through a stoplight and save you two or three minutes). It also means things you don't do, like not slowing to 10 miles below the speed limit just because you see a cop, and if you miss a turn, not veering across four lanes of traffic at the last moment, but proceeding to the next available turn and making your way back.
We already have the perfectly good and more accurate term: "reckless" - it describes all kinds of bad driving, and doesn't impute any psychological baggage. I'm sticking with it.
defensive driving. The act or practice of operating an automobile in such a way as to minimize accidents, especially by looking out for and avoiding others who are driving badly.
Posted by: kevin | May 17, 2010 at 03:11 AM