The survey data from European car drivers forms the core of the SARTRE 3 project. In addition to this data, further information, the contextual data as it is known, was gathered to describe key aspects of road traffic in the participating countries. The contextual data covers various topics of interest for road safety research in Europe such as: • Population • Road network • Vehicles • Exposure • Legislation • Enforcement • Behavioural data on alcohol consumption and seat belt wearing • Road fatality data. The purpose of this additional information data is twofold: on the one hand, the data is intended to provide a background for interpreting the survey data on European car drivers, i.e. to explain any differences between countries, taking different road traffic conditions into consideration. On the other hand, the contextual data information itself is useful for comparing the countries’ current status in road traffic. For countries taking part in the SARTRE project on a regular basis, comparisons over time are also possible because a comparable contextual data analysis was conducted in 1995/96 within the SARTRE 2 project. Contextual data was obtained from a questionnaire completed by participating partners in the SARTRE 3 project, who collected the requested information for their country, mainly from three sources of information: National and international statistics (e.g. National Office of Statistics, International Road Traffic and Accident Database [IRTAD]); Legislative and research literature; Personal information from road safety experts. The purpose of the SARTRE 3 contextual data questionnaire was, on the one hand, to ensure comparability with the contextual data established in SARTRE 2. On the other hand, the survey was adapted to current topics of road traffic safety, i.e. the context information was to adhere as closely as possible to the thematic issues of the SARTRE 3 survey of car drivers. Although the major core variables were kept identical to the previous contextual data survey, some questions in the SARTRE 2 contextual data questionnaire were deleted, mainly due to an inadequate amount of data or an inadequate degree of comparability between countries in the previous study, and new questions were included according to the additional topics in the driver survey. A complete overview of all contextual data of each country can be found on the SARTRE website. In this section, we largely base the countries with two categories in accordance with a WHO classification (cf. Murray & Lopez, 1996) Established Market Economies (EME), which includes the countries of the European Union, Switzerland and Cyprus33 (originally classified by the WHO as Middle East Crescent). The term EME may also be regarded as a synonym for European Union or Western Europe. Former Socialist Countries (FSC) that include all future European Union members plus Croatia. This may be regarded as a synonym for Eastern European Countries or non-European Union countries. The authors consider this to be the most comprehensive classification that integrates current political and economic status with historical backgrounds. (Author/publisher)
Abstract