IN-VEHICLE MUSICAL COMMUNICATION AMONG INTER-STATE COMMERCIAL DRIVERS IN SOUTH-EAST NIGERIA
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- NGN 3000
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Communication is the sharing of ideas, information, opinion, feelings or experiences between people. Humankind has always found a way to communicate which has evolved from tactile communication to pictographic and then to language (Okunna & Omenugha, 2012). Society‘s survival and growth depends on a number of things, among them a system of 2 communication (Bittner 1980 in Okunna & Omenugha, 2012). Shimp (2000) asserts that communication is something you do with another and not to another. Music is one of the systems of communication as it sends encoded messages to the audience (listener). By way of classification, the communication between a driver and the radio or music player is found under the dyadic form of interpersonal form of communication while the radio or music player is a communication channel. Music is one of the greatest influences of mass communication in modern times as popular music has become a global language that leaves a personal and permanent impression (Okunna & Omenugha, 2012). Music listening is not just as old as humanity but it has become both a way of life and a part of life. A clapping of the hands and stamping of the feet is enough to produce good music to the admiration of many wherever they may be. This is one unique quality that has perpetuated music through every generation. Bittner (1980), Brodsky, (2002), Gabrielsson, Lindstrom & Wick, (2003), Dibben & Williamson (2007), Okunna & Omenugha (2012), Unal (2013) see music as the salt of life because of how it flavours life. Music defines the mood of all situations from extreme happy mood marked with boisterous out-pouring of feelings and extreme sad mood characterized by melancholic tunes. The ubiquitous nature of music has made it one of the most enduring and powerful systems of communication. The nature and circumstances of an environment to a large extent determines the type of music played and heard. In-vehicle musical communication is a practice that has come to be accepted as normal behind-the-wheel behaviour. The functions and effects of in-vehicle music have led to two schools of thought. While one school argues for music and driving, the other argues against driving and music (Brodsky, 2002; Dibben & Williamson, 2007; Unal, 2013). 3 Figure 1: Car music deck: A platform for In-Vehicle Musical Communication The automobile is a technology that has changed society dramatically over the last century. But not only society has it changed; the technology of the motorcar itself has changed significantly. The automobile of the 1900's has almost only the concept of four wheels and an engine in common with today's modern cars. The trend has been that vehicles keep evolving to meet the taste and challenges of the modern day consumer. Automobile companies work at improving designs and models to make cars larger, fancier, more powerful or ergonomic. One of the ergonomic features of the car is the radio and the musical deck (Hounshell, 1984). In-vehicle musical communication comes from car radios or playables from the car musical deck which drivers and other occupants in a vehicle listen to. Listening is the second part of any effective communication interchange and is the part that is frequently taken for granted. There is the assumption that listening is something that just happens. But there is a difference between passive listening and active listening. Whereas passive listening is hearing, active listening is listening. Listening is an activity of paying attention to the speaker and subsequent attempt to understand what we hear. Even though listening may be seen as a passive process, it is not true because listeners have to concentrate on the message to be able to decode it (Underwood, 1989). 4 Figure 2: Degrees of Active Listening (www.boundless.com) If listening is an active process, it can also be considered an activity, how then can it be combined with driving which is also an activity? Driving is an activity and the controlled operation of a vehicle such as a car, truck, carriage, bus, tricycle etc. It is an activity that engages mental, physical and psychological faculties. According to National Safety Council (2012), driving is a cognitively complex activity. The brain is behind all tasks needed for driving: visual, auditory, manual and cognitive. The implication is that it is an activity that needs to be performed alone. The rationale for this submission can be best understood from the flowchart below: Figure 3: Driving as an activity (www.github.com) 5 Driving in traffic is more than just knowing how to operate the mechanisms which controls the vehicle; it requires knowing how to apply the rules of the road which govern safe and efficient sharing with other road users. An attempt to combine driving with another activity may lead to distraction as it has the ability to compromise a driver‘s mental skills. Safe operation of a motor vehicle requires that a driver focuses a substantial portion of his or her attentional resources on driving-related tasks, including monitoring the roadway, anticipating the actions of other drivers, and controlling the vehicle (Eby & Kostyniuk, 2003). Engaging in multiple activities like listening and driving could lead to divided attention. According to National Safety Council (2012), multi-tasking is a myth. Human brains do not perform two tasks at the same time. Instead, the brain handles tasks sequentially, switching between one task and another. Brains can joggle tasks very rapidly, which leads us to erroneously believe we are doing two tasks at the same time. In reality, the brain is switching attention between tasks – performing, only one task at a time. Gabrielsson and Lindstrom (2003) list the commonly observed cognitive consequences of listening to music as abandoning of other thoughts, being a whole with music, having imagery of different situations that are reminded by music, and having memories that are associated with music. Therefore, listening to music might alter thoughts, guide attention on specific musical qualities and trigger memory processes as well as suppress processing of thoughts that are not related to music. The utility of in-vehicle musical communication is the main reasons for its practice for which (Brodsky, 2002), a survey of 1,780 British drivers as reported in (Dibben & Williamson, 2007) found that one often cited reason for listening to music while driving was its benefits for relaxation and concentration. These drivers also held the view that music was less distracting than conversation. Wiesenthal, Hennessy and Totten (2000) found a relationship between stress reduction and music among drivers grouped as music group and non-music group, thus highlighting the importance of music as a mechanism for coping with driver stress. Avants, Margolin and Salovey, (1991) hold that drivers in a highly congested vehicular environment, who did not listen to music, displayed significantly greater stress than those 6 who listened to music, suggesting that music communication and listening helped to reduce stress related to traffic congestion – music seemed to enhance these drivers' energy and arousal, helping to alleviate boredom and uplift their mood. According to Unal (2013) when complexity is low, driving task might become overly dull, leading to adverse feelings such as boredom or sleepiness. In such situations, the presence of music might help to reduce boredom or sleepiness by arousing drivers and providing them with the necessary stimulation to stay vigilant. This assertion appears to be the major reason for in-vehicular music listening while driving. Brodsky (2002) investigated the effect of music tempo on driver performance. In this study, the effects of three tempos, ranging from about 60 to 130 beats-per-minute on several measures of driving performance were investigated while music intensity was held constant. The study found that both average driving speed and number of lane crossings significantly increased with tempo, while both the number of missed red-lights and collisions also increased with tempo, but not significantly so. The conclusion from the findings is that music tempo increases driving risks perhaps by competing for attentional space and that the effect of music on driver distraction is a promising line of inquiry. The argument for the claims against in-vehicle musical communication lies in the observation that the behavioral consequences associated with music-listening are, for example, a need for jumping, moving, tapping fingers, singing, dancing, smiling or freezing and inability to carry out any other activity in parallel to listening to music (Gabrielsson & Lindstrom, 2003 in Unal, 2013). So, music has a direct effect on behavior, and might lead to dropping other tasks at hand if the listener is totally absorbed and this constitutes a distraction. 1.1.1 South-East Nigeria: A Contextualization South-Eastern Nigeria was one of the initial 12 States created during the Nigerian civil war. South-East became the name of one of the six geo-political zones in the country in the 1990s consisting of Abia State, Anambra State, Ebonyi State, Enugu State and Imo State. The local language in this region is predominantly Igbo. It is worthy to stress that Eastern Nigeria previously included all areas in the old Eastern Province, which later became Eastern Region in 1939 when Southern Nigeria was divided into two - Western and Eastern. The old Eastern 7 Region was a unified political unit under one government from 1939 up till the creation of twelve states in Nigeria in May 1967. The first effort made by the colonial government in Nigeria to provide modern transport infrastructure in Eastern Nigeria was noticed in 1903 when the promulgation of the ‗Rivers and Creeks Ordinance‘ was made (Wick, 2005). The Ordinance made it compulsory for all adult males to work free for the government for a specified period in a quarter; although concerted effort was not made by the government to pursue a purposeful road policy before the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Thus, railway development, which commenced earlier in Western Nigeria during the last decade of the nineteenth century, was approved for Eastern Nigeria in the early 1910s. This approval was as a result of the discovery of coal in commercial quantity at Udi, near Enugu, and as such railway construction for purposes of evacuating the envisaged coal became inevitable. In modern Nigeria, the old Eastern Region includes five States in the South-East and four in the South- South geo-political zones. These states are - Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River; and Rivers. Till date, most of these nine old Eastern Region States are geographically contiguous. Some of these States have similar cultures and their peoples had engaged in inter-group relations many centuries before the advent of colonial administration and this singular background is the source and the reason for heightened Inter-State vehicular activities for trade, commerce, tourism etc. Against this backdrop, it is worthy to note that during the British colonial government, SouthEastern Nigeria was home to many ethnic groups such as the Igbo, Izon, Bokyi, Ikwere, Annang, Ijaw, Ibibo, and Efik. These groups mostly had democratic systems of government and several kingdoms, such as Nir, Akwa Akpa (Calabar), Aro Confederacy and Opobo which were huge influences in terms of trade and commerce in the region. This is one of the reasons behind the high density of vehicular activities in the region as development was very rapid (Olayiwola, 2010). From 1900-1960, some of the ethnic groups in the area became intermingled in exchange necessitating higher volume of inter-regional transportation activities.
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