Human behaviour when driving depends greatly on personal as well as environmental circumstances. Traffic jams, especially in big cities, cause stress-related problems.
According to specialists, they are considered "micro-stressors". Traffic jams belong to that group of small problems and inconveniences that we suffer every day. The Annual Traffic Scorecard published by Inrix in 2016 (with the participation of the RACC Foundation) studied congestion in more than ten European countries in 2015, producing somewhat stressful and dizzying figures, at least in the case of Spain, which is the one that concerns us.
Although the list was topped by Belgium (with 44 hours), spending an average of 18 hours a year shut up in the car without being able to move freely is… too much. Above all in Barcelona (with 28 hours in jams) and Madrid (with 21 hours), the cities where traffic jams are commonplace. Seville, Bilbao, Valencia and Zaragoza completed the list, which ranged from 18 hours to 11 hours. Far too much time inside our vehicles, in any case.
Traffic psychology
And what does traffic psychology have to say about this? Quite a lot. Time is far too precious to human beings. If we have no choice but to waste it shut up inside a vehicle, surrounded by other vehicles or by more or less angry people, this can only generate frustration and stress.
A traffic jam falls within the external conditions to which we are subject when driving and, like adverse weather, it is not something we can control or that depends on us.
But the time lost can, afterwards, be a reason that drives us to drive faster, taking more risks at the wheel than we should. "Arriving on time" can become a clearly reckless impulse.
Consequences of traffic jams
The consequences of traffic jams also include mental load, since "there may be difficulties in dividing attention between what is projected onto the central retina and the peripheral retina", unlike when we are in free-flowing traffic, as explained by Amaro Egea Caparrós (University of Murcia).
Noise does not help either. This was shown by the London Noise Institute which, in 2018, published a study linking noise levels with hospital admissions in cities such as Madrid. Noise pollution is behind problems such as deafness and headaches.
Even so, stress and anxiety are the "star" psychological effects of spending a good part of one's life in a tailback. In the long run, cardiovascular problems and sleep disorders could be a direct consequence of heavy traffic.