The most striking result of this study is the underestimation of the seriousness of speeding offenses. Whereas excessive speed is reported in most of the accident databases studied as the dominant accident contributory factor, speeding is not amongst those violations that are considered relatively serious by drivers. These results are in line with earlier findings (for instance Brown and Copeman, 1975). Moreover, police officers are largely in agreement with the drivers, where there are differences these indicate that police officers are even more lenient to speeding than drivers themselves. More agreement between subjective and objective seriousness is found with regard to priority violations and with regard to driving while excessively fatigued or under the influence of alcohol. Overtaking and following distance seem to be generally overrated as behaviour-related accident-contributory factors. The results indicate that several actions are required to improve traffic law compliance with regard to those traffic law violations that appear to be accident contributory factors.
Abstract