Given the background statistics, it is important to examine what it is about young male motorcyclists that makes them more susceptible to accident and injury. The present paper attempts to address this problem by concentrating on the psychological variables that mediate between a rider's age and sex and the safeness of his or her riding behaviour. The study is based on a national survey, in which riders' safety-related perceptions, attributions, beliefs, and behaviours were measured at Time 1 in May 1989, and their exposure, behaviour and accident involvement were measured at Time 2 twelve months later. The main purpose of the study was to discover if psychological variables have effect on the subsequent accident involvement of motorcyclists and, if so, what the nature of the effect is. There were three objectives: (a) to identify the psychological factors important in determining the safeness of motorcyclists' riding behaviour; (b) to investigate the structure of these factors and how they relate to biographical factors such as the rider's age, sex and level of education; and (c) to identify areas within the structure where intervention will have an optimum effect in encouraging motorcyclists to comply voluntarily with safety guidelines. There are four main conclusions to draw. First, unsafe riding, as measured by law and rule breaking, is largely habitual in nature. However, the habit is underpinned by a complex structure of biographical and psychological determinants. Second, the psychological variables measured mediate the relationships between biography and behaviour. Third, while simple cost-benefit beliefs measured by the health belief model are effective at explaining the behaviour of young male riders, more detailed behavioural beliefs measured by the theory of reasoned action are needed to explain the behaviour of the population of riders overall (Chesham, Rutter and Quine, 1990). Fourth, intervention programmes of training and education, if they are to succeed, must be applied early in the motorcyclist's riding career before riding habits have been fully developed, and they must be designed to provide a proper cognitive underpinning for behaviour by instigating and developing beliefs and integrating them with behaviour.
Abstract