Psychology of driving

The paper discusses the state of traffic psychology from the perspective of psychology of driving. It is demonstrated that current psychology of traffic fulfils important requirements, which can be derived from this perspective. First: Traffic psychology can be pursued without the need for a unified psychological theory of driving. On the contrary, the great variety of psychological models for describing the conditions and processes of driving a car can be seen as an immense advantage of current psychology of traffic. It can be understood as a quality of psychology, which opens different approaches to its content. When assessing driving ability this variety manifests itself in multi-modal methodology of psychological assessment of drivers. Second: Psychology of driving shows that psychological models of driving must go beyond cognitive, action oriented models. There is also a need for motivational and emotional approaches to traffic psychology, which can influence driving ability. Third: Current traffic psychology offers models of functioning of persons based on general psychology in addition to differential psychology. The concept of development plays an important part for combining general and differential psychology. The developing psychology of driving and therefore also the change in mobility can be used to change the psychology of driving into a psychology of mobility.