ABSTRACT
Wilson (1983, 1991) has noted that in most endeavours to intervene successfully in changing undesirable practices, a major component is the identification and assessment of complex of activities in which individuals are presently engaged, in a detail that is as rich in the appropriate context as possible. A major or perhaps the major part of the context in which driving occurs is social. It is thus surprising that relatively little effort has been devoted to the social description of what drivers are doing in particular locales. This approach to might, in today’s parlance be called studying the ecology of Driving has been applied to the study of pedestrian crossing incidents by Wilson and McArdle (1992). Undesirable, counter-effective driving practices in merging situations, where the number of lanes suddenly decreases, can lead to increased delays and driver annoyances which may ripple into other costly undesirable driving activities. In order to begin to provide a data base upon which desirable driving practice counter-measures might be developed, there is here reported a study of the circumstances under which assistance by passing drivers is provided or not provided to trapped merging drivers upon the occasion of the disappearance of one of the traffic lanes. The location chosen was a busy intersection in a moderate sized Canadian city.
