Young motorcyclists are traditionally considered a high risk population in Taiwan. Given the critical influence of rider's behavior on the traffic safety, identifying what riders think can help clarify the nature of accidents. This paper presents a framework incorporating personality traits, risk perception, utility perception, attitude towards safe riding, and riskyriding behavior into a Structure Equation Model (SEM) in a discussion of the mechanism of risky riding behavior in young motorcyclists. 683 young motorcyclists aged between 18 and 26 years old, holding qualified licenses and having motorcycle riding experience during the past month were collected. As expected, the results indicated that personality traits indirectly affected riding behavior via attitude, risk perception, and utility perception. Notably, risky riders are not all related to those young inexperienced riders, and unlike inexperienced riders they tend to be skillful, confident, and knowledgeable of modern traffic rules. Furthermore, one interesting result relates to the construct of unawareness of traffic conditions, which appeared to strongly and negatively influence risky riding behavior.Riders who frequently neglected the traffic situation exhibit fewer riskyriding behaviors. Such riders can be considered nervous or skill lacking riders whose fear of experiencing an accident led them to fail to observe the surrounding traffic conditions. This analytical result suggests managerial implications for safety education and for future ITS development.
Abstract