The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Distractions _ create havoc on our roads Richard O‘Brien Chronicle Staft We as motorists like to think we‘re driving ourselves from point ‘A‘ to point ‘B‘ but are we driving ourselves to distraction in the process? Are we being "driven to distraction" in terms of getting angry on the road or could we be just plain distracted, forgetting that safe driving is not an effortless process. Things go wrong on the road. In 1985, 3,691 accidents happened in Kitchener and Waterloo. Based roughly on populaâ€" tion counts from 1983, that gives about the same number of accidents per capita as in Toronto or Hamilton while a smaller city like Guelph fares slightly better. We‘re lucky to drive in an area where rush hours aren‘t too fierce, yet peak accident periods in the Waterioo region occur during rush hours and a pattern emerges on police reports. Inattentiveness is the problem, says Sgt. Bill Chipman of the Waterloo Regional Police, and he says the solution is to "get people back in their cars when they‘re driving." â€" **People are interested in doing other things when they‘re driving," said Chipman. They‘re reading a map or a book. They‘re eating, they‘re combing their hair or their mind is somewhere else â€"â€" not in the car." Distracted motorists run red lights or stop signs. And when they follow too closely â€"â€" that‘s one bad habit locally â€"â€" they run the obvious risk of causing a rearâ€"end collision. When we pay attention we might see an accident looking for a place to happen. In the rear view mirror we‘ll sometimes spot a red Trans Am coming up too fast only to tailgate. Or up ahead there might be another driver in a more conservative vehicle going far below the speed limit. Even local law enforcement officers are capable of tangling bampers from time to time as evidenced in this King Street mishap Auto manufacturers use lifestyle adâ€" vertising to appeal to the segments of society they hope will become buyers and we may try to discern the personâ€" alities of drivers by the cars they drive. *"Because you‘re shielded these bahaâ€" viors become exaggerated," said Chrisâ€" topher Knapper, a psychologist in the environmental studies faculty at Uniâ€" versity of Waterloo. ‘‘*We have people shouting within the car or taking retributive action against a driver who cuts in on them which would be glossed over in normal social intercourse by politeness." That‘s not to say we‘ve turned the streets into a jungle. We haven‘t. Knapper says there are drivers who take pride in doing things well and they Mark Bryson photo go unnoticed. But we have to look bevond them for the causes of acâ€" Knapper relates the degree of risks a driver might take with that driver‘s individual skill level. Obviously, a high risk driver with low skill is in trouble while two other groups â€"â€" low risk combined with low skill and high risk combined with high skill â€" may get others in trouble. ‘‘These two groups are quite good at avoiding accidents but they very often cause accidents for other people," said Knapper. ‘"They steer out of a situation but somebody behind them has a colliâ€" sion." Knapper also points to a theory that road signs are placed by people who are not high risk takers and therefore may be read too late by those who take greater chances. _ _ S ‘‘Supposing you have a bend in a road," said Knapper, "and you‘re a low risk taker. You work out what the likely speed is of people approaching that bend and you place a sign to allow people to anticipate that curve. _ *"*But high risk takers are going faster and need the sign sooner." Stress and conflict, Knapper says, lead to accidents. We should have fewer nervewracking situations in the Kâ€"W area than in Toronto where we have to get around that proverbial ‘overturned truck on the Gardiner‘ at rush hour but there is another kind of conflict that causes accidents. WATERLOO CHRMONICLE, WEDNESDOAY, MARCH 26, 1987 â€" PAGE 5 Knapper recommends that driving instructors teach their students to pay attention to social norms. ‘"‘If you think you can regulate traffic by the placement of road signs, you‘re mistaken because you‘re ignoring the social dimension of driving. You could follow all the rules of the road and still cause accidents and cause other people to have accidents." Happy motoring. ‘‘The social etiquette is much more important than many of us understand. If something breaks down with this or we get misunderstandings of the etiâ€" quette then what you have is the possibility of accidents." ‘‘Supposing people come into town who aren‘t aware of this. They‘re obeying one social system and the local people are following another pattern of etiquette. Dangerous intersections are places where outside traffic is interactâ€" ing with drivers from the town.‘"‘ ‘"‘You have in driving a system of legal norms which is what the traffic laws say is supposed to happen," said Knapper, ‘"but you also have what I call social norms that dictate what really happens. (For example) everybody knows most people drive over the speed limit. Conflicts between social norms, therefore, can cause accidents. Knapâ€" per uses as an example the fact that Kâ€"W motorists run amber lights more so than drivers from other parts of Canâ€" ada.