Driving anger and risky behaviour during commuting: The roles of time pressure and children's presence in a naturalistic study from China.

Driving anger is a key psychological factor contributing to risky driving behaviors and elevated crash risk. However, little is known about how situational commuting contexts-such as time pressure and the presence of children-shape or moderate the anger-risk association, especially under similar traffic conditions. Drawing on Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS)data from involving 985 drivers in Harbin, China, this study exmaines how situational factors influence the emotion-behavior pathway during real-world commuting. Drivers' anger were assessed using the 18-item Driving Anger Scale (DAS) based on video-stimulated recall of their own commuting episodes, while risky behaviors were evaluated by 50 trained experts using in-vehicle video observations. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to test three hypotheses across different commuting scenarios. Results indicate a significantly stronger association between anger and risky behavior during morning peak-hour commutes (β = 0.284), highlighting the amplifying role of time-related pressure. In contrast, the presence of children in the vehicle was associated with lower levels of anger and risky behavior (e.g., β = 0.126 during afternoon commutes), suggesting a situational buffering effect linked to parental responsibility. Overall, the findings demonstrates that situational contexts critically shape the anger-risk relationship, intensifying under time pressure during morning commutes while weakening when children are present. These results underscore the importance of situational moderators in driver emotion research and support policy efforts such as adaptive traffic control systems, identity-based safety campaigns, and in-car emotion monitoring technologies.