Risk and safety on the roads: perceptions and attitudes

P Hills, T Carthy, D Packham, N Rhodes-Defty, D Salter, D SilcockTransport Operations Research Group, with Department of Psychology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Ross Silcock Partnership

Cost: 142,000
Published: March 1993

The object of this study was to investigate factors affecting judgement of risk and attitudes to road safety, specifically:

• to increase the understanding of people's perception of risk and their attitudes as road users;
• to identify the reasons underlying what determines whether a road safety measure is acceptable or unacceptable;
• to suggest ways of changing attitudes through environmental aspects, promotional activities, or different approaches to enforcement.

Participants were recruited from areas adjacent to a 23-mile route around Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, and divided by age and gender into 12 groups of 17 years of age or more and with a good mix of social backgrounds. An ambitious and innovative programme of linked surveys was undertaken, whereby the same road locations were used for risk rating in three separate ways:

• by drivers on the road;
• by pedestrians from the roadside; and
• by viewing videos.

This provided an opportunity to examine the validity of the techniques and allowed comparison between direct and indirect forms of assessment.

The main findings were:

• the factors influencing risk perception by drivers were
  • presence of traffic signals
  • degree of competing traffic flow
  • competing pedestrian activity
  • reduced sight distance
  • unusual road layout;
• drivers may ignore pedestrians because
  • drivers had to focus directly on the road ahead
  • drivers were cocooned
  • pedestrians posed no threat;
• the 'domination factor', well known in the animal kingdom, applied on the roads;
• road accidents were half way down a list of topics which were of concern to the participants - with violent crime of most concern and healthy food of least concern;
• five major clusters of attitudes were found - they were not mutually exclusive and were classed as
  • order-orientated
  • community-orientated
  • youth-orientated
  • self-orientated
  • unconcerned;
• three major location clusters were determined with different perspectives as to their degree of danger from the various cluster attitude groups
  • straight road with no need for manoeuvres
  • complex intersections, right-hand turns and motorway merges, and
  • left hand turns with poor sight lines and narrow bridges;
• there was general support for speeding enforcement but 80 per cent admitted to violating the limits in force; danger from speed was not perceived and the chances of survival were incorrectly assessed; traffic conditions often 'required' speeding. There is a strong need to change the social acceptability of speeding;
• there was general support for road safety countermeasures but their effectiveness was sometimes questioned;
• there is a need for more precise targeting in order to maximise the impact on a reduction in road traffic accidents;
• drivers, when pedestrians, were better able to assess roadside risk but, as drivers, took little account of pedestrian activity;
• there was strong support for stricter controls on drinking and driving.

This study was instrumental in bringing wider awareness of the road rage phenomenon which was subsequently given considerable media attention. It also led to an AA Foundation study into the particular problems facing the older pedestrian (FDN15).

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