Engineering techniques, during the 1960-1970 years, have been deployed in the construction of huge road infrastructures for the social and human welfare by the use of science and technique. Nowadays, the engineering vantage has change. At the first sight, transition seems clear. Today, users don't have to conform their behaviours to the road environment transformations. It belongs to engineers to build road infrastructures adapted to the various driver’s behaviours. The incorporation of road safety audit in the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Sea (MEEDDM) and in the Quebec Ministry of Transports (MTQ), exemplifies this turning point. First, road safety audit is applied in a new framework control system for the expertise independence purpose. Second, it introduces a new engineering approach called proactive approach. This one breaks with the previous approaches by transcending technical control with the use of professional experiences and driver’s knowledge in order to adapt infrastructure to driver’s behaviours. This cognitive transformation will be the object of our research. Specifically, we will study the change leaded by experiential knowledge. Paradoxically, we will note traditional cognitive frameworks, which pertain to French and Quebec cultural engineering, in a renewed engineering approach. Then we will show that road safety audit incorporation more underline a transformation of the expert social role than a cognitive change. This social role-modification reflects to new forms of state action legitimacy. Indeed, considering driver’s behaviours particularities and introducing an independent control system will show road safety audit incorporation as the exercise of contemporary legitimacies of state action. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting