In a large scale questionnaire study of English motorists (N = 791) car drivers reported the number of their recent speeding offences; nominated their 'normal' and 'preferred' speeds on four different road types from residential streets to motorways; and were scored for highway code and aggressive violations on the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire and for driver thrill-seeking. This paper reports the extent to which these scores varied across demographic measures - age, sex, social class, household income, domicile (urban to rural) - and with vehicle use measures - driving experience, annual mileage, engine size, age and ownership of car, and the extent to which respondents drove as part of their work. Results identified two problem groups. Young drivers - especially, though not exclusively, young males - reported higher normal and preferred speeds, violations of both types and thrill-seeking, even when scores were corrected for mileage (i.e. opportunity) differences. And drivers from higher social class, higher income households, living out-of-town and driving larger engined cars for high annual mileages as part of their work tended to score higher on all these indices of risky driving. Different road safety countermeasures will be required to constrain these two groups. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725 (C 22328 CD-ROM).
Abstract