An attempts was made to study the development of the attitudes and behavioural intentions of children during their school years with regard to road safety. This report represents a continuation of the research started in 1994, now on a new sample of schoolchildren and adolescents with an improved design. Along with the general questions concerning attitudes to road safety, questions concerning behavioural intentions in three different traffic situations were prepared following the line of the Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour: cycling while intoxicated, use of seat belts, and racing on the road with heavy traffic. A separate scenario concerning running across the street was used with the respondents aged 10 and 11 years from the lower grades of primary school. The relative importance of attitudes, subjective norms and behavioural control, as well as their change during maturation were analyzed and a rough model of road safety maturation was established. Special attention was devoted to perceived influences of peers and relevant adults and their changes during maturation. Therefore a sample (N=1,230) of schoolchildren of various ages (from 10 to 18 years) and from different regions of Slovenia (rural, urban) was questioned. As regards age and sex, respondents differ in their answers mainly in degree an not so much in direction. Their evaluations of road safety, for instance, were similar in the belief that it is important and necessary, but boring and unattractive. At the age of 11, traffic safety is connected mainly with personal characteristics and observing traffic rules. While respondents estimated that not one of the contributing groups would approve of dangerous behaviour, they would mostly comply with the opinions of their parents and the police. Regression and other analyses offered a deeper insight into the results, indicating that with age the "model" of children's road behaviour becomes more consistent and predictable. There are differences in the perceived roles of relevant others concerning children's road behaviour between groups of 10 and 11 year olds. (A)
Abstract