In the quarter century from 1987 through 2011, the lives of 1,031,410 men, women, and children have ended violently as the result of motor vehicle crashes in the United States. Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death for children, teens, and young adults up to age 34, and the leading cause for people ages 15-24. Statistics from the United States Department of Transportation indicate that 32,367 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2011. Although this represents the fewest people killed in crashes in a single year since 1949, it also represents an average of 89 lives needlessly cut short on an average day as the result of crashes on our roads. Since 2006, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has been sponsoring research to better understand traffic safety culture. The Foundation’s long-term term vision is to create a “social climate in which traffic safety is highly valued and rigorously pursued.” In 2008, the AAA Foundation conducted the first annual Traffic Safety Culture Index, a nationally-representative survey, to begin to assess a few key indicators of the degree to which traffic safety is valued and is being pursued. As in previous years, this fifth annual Traffic Safety Culture Index finds that in some ways, Americans do value safe travel and desire a greater level of safety than they now experience. They perceive unsafe driver behaviors such as speeding and drinking and driving as serious threats to their personal safety and generally support laws that would improve traffic safety by restricting driver behavior, even when such laws would restrict behaviors they admit to engaging in themselves. In line with this double standard of supporting laws against one’s own current driving behavior, the survey also highlights some aspects of the nation’s traffic safety culture that might best be characterized by the phrase, “do as I say, not as I do.” For example, substantial numbers of drivers say that it is completely unacceptable to drive 10 mph over the speed limit on residential streets, yet admit having done so in the past month. This report presents the results of the AAA Foundation’s fifth annual Traffic Safety Culture Index, conducted from September 7 through September 24, 2012 by GfK for the AAA Foundation. A sample of 3,896 U.S. residents ages 16 and older were surveyed for this project using a web-enabled probability-based panel representative of the United States population. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting