Traffic participation may be considered as social interaction determined by a social learning process. Degree of accepted risk can be regarded as expression of a certain value system. Application of action theories to socially relevant issues stresses that each individual action is purposive and therefore influenced by functional and terminal values. Action theories regard the individual as an active self-reflecting subject while the risk model views traffic participants in a more reactive role. Evaluation of risk in risk models is derived from the viewpoint of observer, not from that of the person acting. Nowadays, road accidents are not the worst traffic related risk. Environmental problems are at least as serious. Overall analysis of road safety produces the same hierarchy of significance of traffic participation as an analysis of ecological compatibility, i.e. walking, cycling, going by train or tram, going by bus, driving a car. A new view of risk acceptance is (1) traffic safety is inseparably linked to necessity to reduce speeds, car use, and mobility in general; (2) increased attention to ecologically and socially most desirable forms of traffic participation: walking and cycling; (3) choice of mode is an inherent traffic safety factor; (4) encouragement of safer and more socially and ecologically compatible modes of traffic participation.
Abstract