Standard approaches to the understanding and improvement of road safety in motorised countries have been developed over several decades. They have been based on theoretical and methodological approaches which have also been developed in motorised countries, the majority of which have European social and political institutions and cultural heritages. There is some evidence that these standard approaches to road user behaviour do not always transfer readily to less motorised countries. This may be due to inadequacies in social science theories and methodologies when they are applied in a non-European context. Alternatively, the theoretical basis for the road safety interventions used may not have been reinterpreted in the new context, because a particular interpretation of the theory applies generally to motorised countries, and has thus become implicit. In addition, methodologies employed to determine the behavioural features of the local context, such as potential road user interaction with new road safety interventions, may be underutilised or inappropriate for the task. This paper describes research undertaken to explore these alternative explanations. discusses the implications of the findings, and makes recommendations for future research and practice. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725 (C 22328 CD-ROM).
Abstract