There is an exceptionally high accident involvement of adolescent traffic participants in all western motorised countries. The first part of this report consists of a literature review, summarising relevant psychological and psycho-social theories and international research findings. The second part of the report consists of an empirical study among Dutch adolescents. The data was taken from the "Health Behaviour in School-aged Children" (HBSC) Survey. The results in this study suggest that there are certain identifiable groups of adolescents, who show a stronger tendency to engage not only in problem traffic behaviour, but equally also in some other problem behaviour (problem drinking, smoking, gambling and bullying). This is consistent with the idea of a syndrome of problem (risk) behaviour. The data also suggest that this tendency is stronger among males and increases during the course of adolescence. The data also support the notion of "lifestyle". This means that there are certain sub-groups among the adolescent population who have lifestyle characteristics in common: worse school performance and health, less close and open relationship with their parents, stronger feelings of general unhappiness, and a stronger tendency to spend more time with their friends. Their upbringing seems to have less influence. Their parent's occupation (socio-economic status) and parent's problem behaviour have no or only moderate influence on the adolescent's problem behaviour. Overall, these findings support the call for more comprehensive prevention and intervention programmes, dealing not only with the specific problem of traffic behaviour like drink driving, riding as passengers with drivers who used alcohol, or seatbelt negation, but also with the whole lifestyle of the adolescent.
Abstract