Spring has come, outside the city the first pieces of asphalt are modestly breaking through from under the snow, and in the city the already dry asphalt beckons to “light up” and whispers that finally, after 3 months of winter, we can relax a little behind the wheel. And recently I realized such an important thing: the off-season on the road is doubly dangerous for us! Why doubly? Yes, because our psychological, purely human “spring aggravation” is superimposed on the technical aspect of driving a car. What is the off-season, and specifically now - spring, for a car and its driver? First of all, this is, of course, changing tires. At least this is relevant for most of the population and territory of our country. But the fact is that if changing tires takes about 30 minutes, then restructuring the driving style (both technically and psychologically) of the car can take a significant amount of time. And here a lot depends on the pace, adequacy and understanding of these very changes by the driver himself. In the spring, our grip on the road improves significantly, daylight hours become longer, there is much less dirt on the road, but under these seemingly safer conditions, we begin to move towards risk: the average speed increases significantly; due to favorable road conditions, we make risky (fast and sharp) maneuvers that we could not afford on a winter road. But the main difficulty, it seems to me, is precisely that everyone has We have different speeds of adaptation on the road. And most problems, be it traffic accidents or simply conflicts on the road, are related to the fact that we have to interact with each other from different phases of this adaptation to new road realities. And at this very difficult moment, in addition to the “technical” aspects of driving a car (mechanical skills, driving experience, the ability to see and predict the road situation), spring throws us psychological difficulties with ourselves. My experience as a psychologist and driver tells me that since cars a person drives, his emotional and physical state influences the quality of his driving no less than his mechanical skills. So how does spring affect us behind the wheel? First, we need to understand that several months of cold, dark and gray winter are behind us. By the end of winter, our psychological resources are running out, which is where fatigue and apathy come from. In winter, the areas of the brain responsible for perception are more active, and those responsible for making decisions, on the contrary, are inhibited; in spring, everything is exactly the opposite, which fundamentally destroys the entire “perception-action” cycle. We perceive the situation on the road well, but at such a pace we do not have time to make the right decision as quickly as necessary. In spring and summer, the speed of our reaction increases, but we begin to see the situation on the road worse. (Including due to the greater number of “irritants” on and around the road) And physical inactivity and solar radiation also have an impact on us. A person moves much less in the winter than in the spring-summer period; lethargy and muscle weakness are a typical result of wintering, and this can lead to the fact that in the event of an emergency, you simply do not have enough physical strength and endurance to drive a car. If you don’t believe me, try turning the steering wheel from extreme position to extreme position 10 times in a row at maximum speed. In addition to all this, the long-awaited sun increases our emotional excitability, which can play a cruel joke in a traffic conflict; it is easier to provoke us into inappropriate actions or even a fight! Our maneuvers may be spontaneous and incomprehensible to neighbors in traffic. In addition to all this, the general condition of the driver after the winter has a great influence. And this is a tendency to depression, rapid fatigue, sudden mood swings. Here you are driving happily and enjoying the early spring and the March sun, but after a few seconds you are ready to kill that impudent person who abruptly changed lanes without turn signals into your lane. We react very sharply to any irritants, and on the road there are more and more of them.