Safety Science 44 (2006) 621–628

www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci

The effects of personality and gender on risky

driving behaviour and accident involvement
Sigve Oltedal, Torbjørn Rundmo *

Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology,

Dragvoll, 7491 Trondheim, Norway

Received 22 March 2005; received in revised form 30 November 2005; accepted 20 December 2005

Abstract

The present study investigates the effects of personality traits and gender on risky driving behav-
iour and accident involvement. A sample of Norwegian adolescents in two Norwegian counties par-
ticipated (n = 1356). Anxiety was significantly correlated to excitement-seeking and risky driving
behaviour, and excitement-seeking was significantly correlated to risky driving behaviour and colli-
sions. Through a regression analysis, personality traits and gender were found to explain 37.3% of
the variance in risky driving behaviour. However, the relations were not very strong, and the person-
ality traits did only explain a moderate part of the variance. Possible explanations for this as well as
methodological considerations are discussed. Directions for further research are suggested.
Ó 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Traffic accidents; Risky driving behaviour; Personality; Gender

1. Introduction

In Norway, 280 people were killed and 11,760 injured in road traffic accidents in 2003
(StatisticsNorway, 2004). Such accidents differ from other causes of injury or death
because they do not differentiate between young and old, sick and healthy. In fact, young
healthy people are more likely to be involved in accidents than others. One of four
physically injured in accidents on the Norwegian roads is younger than 24 years of age

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +47 73591656; fax: +47 73591920.
E-mail address: torbjorn.rundmo@svt.ntnu.no (T. Rundmo).

0925-7535/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2005.12.003
622 S. Oltedal, T. Rundmo / Safety Science 44 (2006) 621–628

(Ulleberg, 2000). Finding means to reduce the number of accidents would be of great
benefit for those directly involved as well as for the society at large. The present study
investigates how personality traits and gender are related to risky driving and accident
involvement in a sample of young Norwegians.
In recent years, the researchers have increasingly placed more emphasis on the human
factors related to driving (Lajunen, 1997). The relationship between skills, behaviour and
accident involvement is complex, and it is a challenge for the psychology to provide a bet-
ter understanding of how human factors and psychological mechanisms are related to this
(Elander et al., 1993). The focus of behavioural traffic safety research has moved from
skills and driving abilities towards willingness to take risks (Iversen and Rundmo,
2002). Unsafe drivers are not necessarily those with low skills. Skilled drivers who engage
in risky activities like speeding might be even more dangerous. People’s willingness to take
risks is widely acknowledged to be an important personality characteristic and virtually all
trait taxonomies include some dimension related to this. The great majority have examined
the influence of sensation-seeking (Zuckerman, 1994) and excitement-seeking (Costa and
McCrae, 1992) on risky driving behaviour (Jonah, 1997). These are different scales to mea-
sure the same general concept, namely the people’s willingness to take risks and their ten-
dency to crave stimulation and excitement.
The relationship between sensation-seeking and speed is well documented (Arnett et al.,
1997; Clement and Jonah, 1984; Zuckerman and Neeb, 1980). Speed level is also related to
crash risk (Elander et al., 1993). Ulleberg (2000) found that sensation-seeking character-
ized a high accident-risk group of young drivers. Arnett et al. (1997) also presented results
indicating that sensation-seeking is related to reckless driving among adolescents. Iversen
and Rundmo (2002) reported that among Norwegian drivers, those with higher sensation-
seeking scores reported more risky driving behaviours than low scorers. In general, the
majority of research supports the conclusion that sensation-seeking behaviour is related
to risky driving. Accordingly, Jonah et al. (2001) found that high sensation seekers were
significantly more likely to speed, not wear belts, drink frequently and drive after drinking
compared to low sensation seekers.
Costa and McCrae (1992) reported that anxiety was significantly related to negative
affect. The driver’s level of negative effect might influence his or her interpretation of
the traffic environment and driving behaviour. Garrity and Demick (2001) investigated
the relationship between the five-factor personality traits and driving behaviour. They
found no significant correlations. However, they reported a significant relationship
between the mood state tension-anxiety, which is strongly related to neuroticism, and ne-
gative driving behaviour.
Each of the five traits, neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness
and conscientiousness, comprises of six more specific traits, or facets. These facets make it
possible to identify meaningful individual differences within each trait. Such effects can
easily be overlooked if only the main traits are examined (Costa and McCrae, 1992). This
multifaceted approach is, according to Costa and McCrae (1992), a crucial advantage to
the five factor model since it offers an essential elaboration of the traits. Elander et al.
(1993) argue that by using subscales rather than overall scores, more reliable correlations
between personality traits and driving behaviour could be obtained.
Other personality traits may also influence driving. Driver anger or aggression has been
extensively investigated. Deffenbacher et al. (2003) found that high-anger drivers reported
more frequent and intense anger and more aggression and risky driving behaviour in daily
 S. Oltedal, T. Rundmo / Safety Science 44 (2006) 621–628 623

driving. They also reported greater anger in frequently occurring situations, more frequent
close calls and higher speed of driving. With the amount of driving being accounted for,
high anger drivers were found to be twice as likely to crash and committed 2.4–3.6 times
more aggressive acts than low anger drivers. Sümer (2003) did a study on professional
drivers in Turkey. She found that sensation-seeking and aggression were together predic-
tive of risky driving.
Chliaoutakis et al. (2002) reported that driving violations and driver irritability were
two factors relevant to aggressive driving. Irritability was found to be a predictor of young
driver’s involvement in car crashes. Their analysis suggested that young drivers who get
easily irritated and who express hostility or aggression toward other drivers have a greater
crash risk.
Normlessness has also been hypothesized to be of importance. In a study by Iversen
and Rundmo (2002) respondents who scored high on normlessness were involved in more
risky driving, accidents and near accidents. They accepted rule violations and did not care
whether they broke laws as long as it served a certain goal.
Gender has also consistently been reported to relate to risk behaviour, i.e., males are
more willing to take risks than females. It has been argued that the evolutionary process
has made it necessary for males to take risks and that this tendency therefore is an adap-
tation (Buss, 2004). In terms of risk behaviour in road traffic, gender differences have been
reported by numerous researchers. Yagil (1998) reported male drivers express a lower
motivation to comply with traffic rules, particularly the younger individuals. She also
found males to perceive traffic violations as less dangerous than did females. Whissell
and Bigelow (2003) did a study suggesting that accidents were typically a function of
sex. Further, risky driving is a more influential factor in adolescents injuries and deaths
among males (Vavrik, 1997). Ulleberg (2000) did a cluster analysis to identify subgroups
of risky drivers among adolescents. He reported that males with high sensation seeking
scores constituted the majority of one such group. Finally, Rosenbloom and Wolf
(2002) reported a risky shift in males detection of danger on the road compared to females.
To sum up, the existing evidence clearly suggests that both personality and gender are
related, in part strongly, to risky driving behaviour. The aim of the present study is to
examine the degree to which such relationships are applicable to a sample of young Nor-
wegian drivers on a number of selected personality traits. The connection between risky
driving behaviour and accident involvement will also be investigated.

2. Method

2.1. Sample

A questionnaire survey was carried out in 1998–1999. The survey was part of a traffic
safety campaign initiated by the Norwegian Authorities of Public Roads in cooperation
with the Police Department, the Norwegian Society of Road Safety and the Traffic Safety
Committees of two Norwegian counties (Ulleberg, 2000). The respondents were randomly
selected from high school classes within these counties. The Questionnaires were completed
individually and anonymously while at school. The total samples included 4397 adolescents.
Those who had been licensed drivers for three months or more were extracted and selected
for the present study. This produced a final sample of 1356 respondents, among which 724
(53.4%) women were and 632 (46.6%) were men. The majority was 18 or 19 years of age.
624 S. Oltedal, T. Rundmo / Safety Science 44 (2006) 621–628

2.2. Questionnaire

A questionnaire using facets from a Norwegian translation of the NEO Personality

Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1992) was applied to measure excitement-seeking, anxiety,
and aggression. The measurement for each facet consists of eight items. Each item is
phrased as a statement to which subjects express agreement or disagreement on a five point
Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The facets are traits in their
own right and can be applied detached from the larger traits. For convenience, all person-
ality variables included in the present study are referred to as traits. Measures of normless-
ness were adopted from Kohn and Schooler (1983), while The Driving Anger Scale
developed by Deffenbacher et al. (1994) was used to measure driver anger or irritability.
Scales to measure self-reported acts of risk-taking in traffic were also included. An index
based on three dimensions of risky driving was used to measure the concept altogether.
These scales, termed speeding, rule violations and self-assertiveness, were previously devel-
oped by Rundmo and Ulleberg (2000). Accident involvement was measured through
self-reports asking people if they had ever been involved in accidents with either material
damage or personal injury. The applied questionnaire is reproduced in its entirety in
Ulleberg (2000).

2.3. Statistical procedures

To examine the general relationships between personality, driving behaviour and acci-
dent involvement, a bivariate correlation analysis was applied. A linear regression analysis
was carried out to determine the degree to which the variance in risky driving behaviour
can be explained by the included personality traits and gender. Gender and the personality
traits, anxiety, excitement seeking, aggression, normlessness and irritability, were entered
as independent variables predicting risky driving behaviour.
Pi Each variable’s unique and
raw contributions were calculated using the formulas n¼1 b  r  100 and r2 * 100. Inde-
pendent samples t-tests were used to check for gender differences.

3. Results

Table 1 shows the obtained correlations between the included personality traits, risky
driving behaviour and accident involvement. Correlations ranged from small to modest.
Irritability is significantly correlated with risky driving behaviour (r = .39) and acci-
dents with damages (r = .10). The same goes for aggression, however weaker. Correlations
coefficients are .19 and .09. Anxiety shows a significant negative correlation with excite-
ment-seeking (r = .22) and risky driving (r = .16), but it is not correlated with accident
involvement. Excitement-seeking is related to risky driving (r = .30) and accidents with
damages (r = .12), but not accidents with personal injury. Risky driving behaviour corre-
lates with both accidents with damages (r = .21) and accidents with personal injury
(r = .14). Normlessness shows the strongest correlation with risky driving behaviour
(r = .45).
Table 2 shows the results of a linear regression analysis. Put together, the model
accounted for about 37% of the variance in risky driving behaviour. All predictors, apart
from anxiety, accounted for a significant part of the variance in risky driving behaviour,
with normlessness, irritability and gender giving the strongest contributions. The effects of
 S. Oltedal, T. Rundmo / Safety Science 44 (2006) 621–628 625

Table 1
Correlations between personality traits, risky driving behaviour and accident involvement
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. Irritability –
2. Normlessness .28** –
3. Aggression .30** .14** –
4. Anxiety .04 .21** .31** –
5. Excitement-seeking .25** .28** .07** .22** –
6. Risky driving behaviour .39** .45** .19** .16** .30** –
7. Accidents with injury .012 .07* .03 .00 .03 .14** –
8. Accidents with damages .10** .14** .09** .04 .12** .21** .21**
*
p < .01.
**
p < .001.

Table 2
Results from the regression analysis with anxiety and excitement-seeking as predictors of risky driving behaviour
b t r Unique contribution (%) Raw contribution
Anxiety .002 .077 .16 0 2.6%
Excitement-seeking .103 4.188 .30 3 9%
Aggression .103 4.037 .19 2 3.6%
Irritability .240 9.544 .39 10 5.8%
Normlessness .281 11.156 .45 12 20.3%
Gender .276 11.145 – 10
Adjusted R2 = 37.3%.
Dependent variable: risky driving behaviour.

excitement seeking and aggression were somewhat weaker. Independent sample t-tests
revealed significant gender differences in risky driving behaviour (t = 13.99, df = 1311,
p < .001), accidents with damages (t = 5.71, df = 1226, p < .001) and accidents with per-
sonal injury (t = 2.60, df = 1139, p < .05). Males obtained higher scores than females in
all these aspects.

4. Discussion

The present study was carried out to investigate the relationships between gender and a
number of personality traits of risky driving behaviour and accident involvement. The
applied regression model explained 37% of the variance in self-reported risky driving. In
particular, gender and normlessness were strong predictors of risky driving behaviour.
The strong effect of gender also confirms a well-established finding within the risk research
community. However, the fact that normlessness should be a similarly strong predictor
was less expected. According to this, normless males report most risky driving. This find-
ing is in line with the results presented in the introduction and hence gives further support
to these dimensions as important elements of risk behaviour in traffic. Besides implying
low respect for actual traffic rules and regulations, normlessness may relate to a general
tendency of irresponsibility and therefore be of importance to driving behaviour at large.
Irritability also explained a relatively large part of the variance in risky driving, possibly
because irritability may foster agitation which again may impair concentration and the
626 S. Oltedal, T. Rundmo / Safety Science 44 (2006) 621–628

ability to focus. Apart from this, the remaining personality variables explained a smaller
part of the variance. Several possible explanations to this can be suggested.
First, personality may be indirectly related to driving behaviour, for instance, by influ-
encing how much people drive and the manner in which they choose to do so (Beirness,
1993). Ulleberg and Rundmo (2003) found personality to influence risky driving indirectly
through affecting the attitudinal determinants of behaviour. Such explanations are highly
plausible, since personality constitutes broad patterns of behavioural tendencies. High cor-
relations between personality and specific behaviours may therefore be unlikely (Epstein
and O’Brien, 1985).
Second, personality may not have equal effects on all groups of drivers. According to
trait theory, personality stabilizes in adulthood, typically around the age of 30 (Costa
and McCrae, 1990). A search for relationships between personality and driving behaviour
among adolescents may be biased and to generalize to other groups of drivers may be
problematic. Where the driving takes place may also be of significance. Some driving envi-
ronments are more regulated than others. Perhaps personality variables influence driving
more among people who live in rural areas, simply because they are more free to drive as
they please? The current study included subjects from both urban and rural areas. Perhaps
a segregation of these groups would produce different results? Further research is needed
to determine the manner in which personality actually relates to driving behaviour.
The trait anxiety presents a particularly interesting case in the present study. The fact
that it was weakly related to risky driving and unrelated to accident involvement was con-
trary to expectations. This finding may suggest a non-linear relationship between anxiety
and driving behaviour, i.e., for individuals with an average or controllable level of anxiety,
this trait will not affect their driving behaviour in any important way. However, very high
or very low scores may still be related to risky driving. High scorers are typically tense and
nervous. Low scorers are calm and relaxed (Costa and McCrae, 1992). Possibly, can too
much calmness and relaxation make drivers unaware or even careless of potential risks
related to driving? Ulleberg (2000) reported that high and low levels of anxiety were
among the characterizing attributes of two different groups of high-risk young drivers.
This finding supports the possibility of a non-linear relationship between anxiety and driv-
ing behaviour.
There are several aspects that one should be aware of when interpreting the results of
traffic safety research such as the present study. First, people have a tendency to overes-
timate the frequency of dramatic events, such as serious traffic accidents (Oltedal et al.,
2004). Even though accidents are frequently reported in the news, they do in fact happen
very rarely. A driver’s risk of getting injured or killed on Norwegian roads is .19 per mil-
lion kilometres driven (Bjørnskau, 2003). From a group of five, only one will be involved
in an accident during a lifetime as a driver, and with 80–90% certainty the accident will
cause no more than a light personal injury (Vaa, 2003). In a survey using a random sam-
ple, those who have actually been involved in accidents are likely to be too few to make an
impact. That is, even if personality is related to accident involvement, this relation is dif-
ficult to fully detect. If respondents were selected in a way ensuring that a satisfactory por-
tion of the sample has been involved in accidents, those could be compared to those with
fewer or no accident records.
A further problematic issue concerning traffic accident research in general is impres-
sion management. How honest can we expect people to be when asked about their acci-
dent record? In fact, one can think of several reasons for people to be dishonest.
 S. Oltedal, T. Rundmo / Safety Science 44 (2006) 621–628 627

Accidents are often seen as the result of speeding or other kinds of irresponsible driving
behaviour. Insurance companies demand higher premiums from people with accident
records and it questions their abilities as drivers. Despite this, Lajunen and Summala
(2003) concluded in their study that bias caused by social desirability was a relatively
small problem. Similar results have been reported from studies on personality. They have
shown that although people are capable of distorting their answers on personality tests,
most people tend to answer honestly if instructed to do so (Costa and McCrae, 1992).
Still, accidents can simply be forgotten. Loftus (1993) found that 14% of people involved
in injury-provoking accidents had forgotten about it a year later. Maycock et al. (1996)
reported that approximately 30% of all accidents are forgotten within a year (in Iversen
and Rundmo, 2002). A possible solution to this could be to ask about accidents that have
happened in a limited period of time. Impression management and forgetting the present
challenge for research on accident involvement, since there will always be some uncer-
tainty tied to self-reports.
To summarize, the current results present evidence suggesting that both gender and cer-
tain personality traits are influential on risky driving behaviour among Norwegian adoles-
cents. However, not all the relationships were strong, indicating that traits are perhaps not
directly related to driving behaviour. To determine if personality traits might work as a
mediating factor, more efforts should be aimed at investigating the relationships between
personality traits and variables that are more directly related to driving behaviour, like for
instance the amount of time spent on driving.

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