The traffic safety depends on the three elements: driver, vehicle and road. The driver is the least perfect and least predictable element in the traffic safety system. A fundamental premise of government policies is that it is possible to reduce the number of crashes and severity of accidents by improving the design of the road and use of safety devices, by educating the drivers and using enforcement. Wilde’s theory of Risk Homeostasis proves that the premise is not entirely correct. Engineering can provide an improved opportunity to be safe, education can enhance the performance skills, and enforcement of rules against specific unsafe acts may be able to discourage people from engaging in these particular acts, but none of these interventions necessarily increases the desire to be safe. If, however, safety is actually determined more by the motivation to be safe than by the physical opportunity that is offered or by the level of skill, the introduction of accident countermeasures of the engineering, education and enforcement varieties would not necessarily reduce the accident rate per head of population. (Author/publisher) This publication may be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.ictct.org/workshop.php?workshop_nr=26
Abstract