Research in Brief: A Method for Psychophysiological Assessment of Acute Stress Induced by High-Pressure Law Enforcement Driving

In police work, when anxiety levels become high, attention is directed to threat-related sources of information. This may make it more difficult to pay attention to goal-directed information that is relevant for executing the task properly. Police officers driving during an emergency call are required to stay focused on the most demanding driving despite the fact that visual, manual, and cognitive skills are affected by the emotional reactions and “target fixation” that may accompany emergencies.1 Under such stressful conditions, law-enforcement (LE) driving is highly “distracted,” according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which defines “distracted driving” as “any activity that could divert brain attention away from the primary task [driving] and enhance the risk of having a crash.”2