The study was carried out by mail questionnaires in two phases. In the first phase licence holders were asked about attitudes towards traffic matters. In the second phase, two years later, those who answered the first questionnaire, were asked about road accidents in the period between the first and the second questionnaire. In this way attitudes were measured before the accidents occurred. A random sample of 15,000 licence holders was drawn from the Norwegian driving licence register. The response rate was 66 percent in the first phase. Of those, 75 percent answered the second questionnaire. Road accident risk is defined as the number of accidents (both injury and material-damage-only accidents) per million kilometres for groups of drivers. The results showed an expected, positive correlation between attitudes and road accident risk when no other factors were controlled for. Drivers with "right" attitudes had lower road accident risk than drivers with "wrong" attitudes. When age of the licence holder was controlled for, however, this correlation was reduced. Both attitudes and road accident risk are related to age. The youngest drivers had most "wrong" attitudes, and the oldest drivers had most "right" attitudes. The road accident risk was highest for the youngest drivers, and lowest for the oldest drivers. Gender and annual driving distance are also important to the relation between attitudes and road accident risk. Men had more "wrong" attitudes, but lower road accident risk than women. Those who drove much annually had more "wrong" attitudes, but lower road accident risk than those who drive little annually. The results do notindicate that drivers' attitudes, as measured in this study, are of great importance for road accident risk. The results do not indicate that drivers' attitudes, as measured in this study, are of great importance for road accident risk.
Samenvatting