What should be the traffic education objective? Towards an unconsciously competent driving

Pablo Daniel FUENTES
Degree in Accidentology and Road Prevention. Chief Commissioner of the Criminal Division of the Police of La Pampa (Argentina). Official Expert, Teacher at the Higher Police Institute in the field of Road Education

Gabriel Horacio MARINO
Relator del Tribunal Oral en lo Criminal Federal de la Provincia de La Pampa. Estudiante de Astronomía

ABSTRACT

The present article introduces the concept of the phases of learning, which is studied by professionals of the neurolinguistics` field. This discipline is applied in the sciences of the communication and education.

It establishes and differentiates the four phases in question: unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, consciously competent and unconsciously competent. Through the analysis of a contemporary traffic accident, it exemplifies the Street behaviours linked with those phases. As part of a comparative study, it is examined the dichotomy fact possibility versus the normative priority.

So their authors propose a traffic educational approach which through a modernized management of the contents to transmit in classrooms and dissertations and the elaboration of appropriate questionnaires, allows detecting early the speaker`s phase and its potential behaviours in the Street. This is with the aim of motivating him towards more advanced phases of the process, using effective tools to promote the necessary and appropriate changes in his behaviour.

This work concludes with fixing, as primordial objective in traffic education, the development of a traffic thought.

KEYWORDS:

Traffic, Road safety, Learning phase, Neurolinguistics, Unconscious, Aware, Incompetent, Competent, Road accident, Road safety education.