Assessing personality types or styles goes back thousands of years. Rob Fisher, a human factors expert, says in ancient Asia, “fire,” “wind,” “water,” “earth” and other terms were used to capture the different personalities of different people.
A bit more recently, 42 years ago to be precise, “Personality Factors In Accident Causation” was a paper prepared in 1977 for the Texas Office of Traffic Safety. The paper cites traffic accident studies indicating that “long-term accident repeaters” are characterized by aggressiveness, impulsiveness, depression, anxiety and extroversion. The authors quickly add “the evidence at this date is tenuous, but there does seem to be a certain consistency in the traits described as accident-related when personality differences are identified.”