The average British person spends around an hour commuting each day, yet it’s something that most of us hate.  Indeed, surveys suggest that most of us would gladly accept a pay cut if it meant a shorter commute, with some companies even paying staff to live closer to the office.

Whilst most of the time, the commute is framed in the sense of its impact upon our productivity and psychological wellbeing, a recent study also highlights its impact on our safety.

Dangerous commute

The study, from the University of Haifa, suggests that the stress we incur on our commute can make us drive in an unsafe manner.  Participants in the study were surveyed on what they regarded as acceptable behavior when driving.  For instance, is it cool to answer the phone or to send a tweet?

They were also quizzed on the frequency with which they engaged in unsafe behavior, such as undertaking other vehicles or failing to leave a sufficient gap to the car in front.

The researchers found that a couple of distinct forms of stress had an impact on our driving ability.  Firstly, if we had conflict between our work life and family life, this tended to result in more dangerous driving during our commute.  The rationale behind this is that the commute offers a liminal period, and as such our thoughts become especially salient and disrupt out attention.

The second form of stress was related to our boss.  It’s well known that abuse from a supervisor tears away our attention at work, but the study also suggests this spills over into our commute time as well.  Indeed, a hard time from our boss can prompt us to focus unduly on work matters whilst driving, and therefore not on the matter at hand.

In some ways, this should come as no surprise.  I wrote recently about the impact of stress on doctors performance.  A study found that not only did an argument with a relative cause performance to drop during the procedure in question, it also caused performance to drop throughout the entire day, suggesting our minds can easily be distracted by stress at work, and that this stress can endure for some time.

When such distractions are placed in the life and death environment of our daily drive to work however, it should focus the mind somewhat.  The study involving doctors found that the best approach to mitigate the impact stress has on our performance was to play a game prior to the study that was designed to raise the threshold of their sensitivities to anger and aggression.

Whether this works in the same way for combating stress is difficult to say, but what certainly appears clear is that both employer and employee alike should do all they can both to reduce stress in the first place, and to help employees combat it when it occurs.