Dark personality and road crashes: mediating role of driver vengeance and violations

Aggressive driving and road rage are increasingly leading to Motor Vehicle Collisions (MVC), especially in the developing countries. Considering that malevolent personality characteristics, such as dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) create a tendency for vengeful and aggressive driving, we examined the power of personality variables in predicting MVC. Specifically, using Contextual Mediated Model (Sümer, 2003), we tested a double mediation model in which driving anger and vengeance mediate the relationships between personality characteristics (Big Five Traits and Dark Triad) and driving violations, and in turn, driving violations mediate the link between driving anger/vengeance and risky driving outcomes (MVC and traffic tickets). Turkish drivers (N = 485, female = %51) completed the measures of personality, aberrant driving behaviors, vengeance, and driving anger. Results of path analyses revealed that whereas narcissism and neuroticism are the critical predictors for aggressive driving Machiavellianism is the strongest predictor of driving vengeance. Moreover, Machiavellianism both directly and indirectly via driving vengeance and violations predicted MVC. Personality variables and mediating variables explained 21% and 26% of the variance in MVC and traffic tickets, respectively, values much higher than those previously reported in the past research. Findings have critical implications for the assessment of aggressive drivers and potential for road rage.