The current study asked students (aged 11 to 16) in England (where the legal driving age is 17) to complete questionnaires about their attitudes and behaviour as far as road use and anticipated driving was concerned. Altogether 567 school pupils were recruited from secondary schools in the Reading area. The questionnaire asked for basic demographic information and included self-report questions on sensation seeking (Arnett, 1994), competitiveness (Smither and Houston, 1994), social motives (West et al., 1993) and risk perception. The violations questions from the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) (Reason et al., 1990) were adapted for the purposes of this study: rather than asking 'how often do you (eg) run red lights?' we asked the students 'is it ok for drivers to (eg) run red lights?'. The responses to these questions were used to provide a measure of condonement of violations. The responses to two questions about speed choice were aggregated to provide a single item about affinity for fast speeds: the questions were 'will it be fun to learn to drive fast?' and 'is driving fast exciting?'. There were also questions about the anticipated experience of driving and other aspects of road use. Students were also asked about their involvement with sport, in an attempt to further examine the competitive aspect of these behaviours. Results from the study show that there are sex and age differences in attitudes to driving behaviour (even though it is only anticipated behaviour) and cycling behaviour and road use in general in both boys and girls from 11 years old. In almost all of these areas there are sex differences such that males are indicating riskier attitudes/behaviours than girls. Given that this is the case it seems that education about safe driving should not be held in reserve until people start to drive at 17. Their attitudes are being formed long before then and may influence other types of accident involvement such as cycling or pedestrian accidents. Given that this is the case, driver training/education specifically and road user training/education in general need to be initiated at an age much younger than 17 (in the UK) if safe attitudes and behaviours in road use are to be instilled in young people. Such training/education might be in the form of parent-driver contracts (an unofficial form of graduated licensing). Alternatively, parent education regarding the potential accident involvement of children and strategies to try and deal with this might be developed. However, care needs to be taken that any intervention is carefully monitored and evaluated. (Author/publisher) For the covering abstract see ITRD E116881.
Abstract