In Austria, problems in the sphere of traffic monitoring are a topic of frequent discussion. A project carried out by the Traffic Safety Council in 1993 and 1994, comprised a traffic-technical section and a traffic-psychological study project. This traffic-psychological project consisted of the following subprojects: (a) establishing a state of the art report in the traffic monitoring field; (b) monitoring the behaviour of drivers stopped in traffic; (c) interviews with executive officers responsible for surveillance; (d) interviews with decisionmakers; (e) interviews among the public; and (f) the officers' level of preparedness: an increase in the use of officers and of technical equipment was planned. Some results are: (1) The clearest problem with surveillance, in the public opinion, is that of drunk driving, while police officers consider the surveillance of drunk drivers as a central issue; (2) The great majority of police officers is of the opinion that using laser equipment facilitates a much more flexible and efficient control of speeders; (3) One of the police officers' suggestions for improving traffic surveillance is to remove certain tasks from the realm of their responsibility; and (4) regarding the decisionmakers' opinions, the most urgent concern in the view of nearly everyone interviewed is that of personnel.
Abstract