The present paper discusess briefly the enforcement officials' behaviour in dealing with traffic violations and the effect on road user behaviour. This paper uses basic concepts of learning literature as a frame to cover the subject. The discussion is centred around the experience with Turkish enforcement officials and the results of a small scale research study which aims to find out to what extent opinions or beliefs regarding the enforcement are shared among the police officers. Since the data is obtained from a small scale pre-study of a research, the content of this paper is limited to the discussion of the rationale of the main research. Although results of present pre-study does not allow any clear comment, some evidence exists to suggest that enforcement officials have certain beliefs and ideas about what the enforcement is and how it must be practised, some of which may have an effect on their behaviour. To what extent these beliefs and ideas dominate and to what extent they reflect in their behaviour is suggested to be of great importance in the sense that some of them may have a good effect or be detrimental on the enforcement activity. It is suggested that, in any case, it is necessary to support enforcement officials through increased awareness about the psychological effect and relative importance of enforcement activity on road user behaviour. Moreover, it is also necessary to reconsider whole enforcement practice to support relevant officer behaviour and to integrate this approach with the whole traffic officer training programme. For the covering abstract see ITRD E118917.
Samenvatting