The objective of this work was to investigate the risk perception of a motorcyclist group from Curitiba, Brazil. It was developed an interview with open questions and individually applied in eighteen motorcyclists. The answers were analyzed by the risk approach proposed by Slovic, using qualitative underlying factors to risk perception: the familiarity, the control and the confidence. The motorcyclists say that when they stop in the red sign they need to manage the fear to be a victim of an assault. In the crossings in the city the motorcyclists find in a situation of concurrent risks: assault or collision. They have two options. In the first option they can obey the law and wait in the red sign until the green sign, but this leads to the risk of to be assaulted while stopped. In the second option they can violate the law and cross the red sign, avoid a possible assault, but taking the risk of a traffic accident. Then, we can say that the driver has a confrontation between two risks, and he or she stay in the obligation to elect one to confront to he or she do not be reached by the consequences of the other. The Risk Homeostasis Theory, developed by Wilde, indicates that the decision about a risk behavior is influenced by four factors (benefits and costs of the safe and the risk behaviors). Thus, when confronting a situation that demands a decision taking that involve risks, four factors are analyzed: benefits of having a risk behavior, costs of this risk behavior, benefits of having a safe behavior and the costs of this behavior. In the case investigated in this work there is a singular situation because the decision involve two risk behaviors: to be stopped in the red sign and to take a risk to be assaulted, or go ahead in the red sign and to have the possibility to suffer an accident. According the Homeostasis Risk Theory, there are eight factors to be analyzed in few seconds, all of then superposed. The decision in favor of one behavior excludes the other. By the answers of the motorcyclists there is a distorted risk perception in go ahead in the red sign as well in stay stopped. The danger of stay stopped in the sign is supervalued by the motorcyclists in opposition to the collision risk because go ahead that is minimized. The analyses of the answers indicate that the altered perception of the risks by the motorcyclists can be related with the high motorcycles accidents indexes in Curitiba, Brazil. (Author/publisher) This publication may be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.ictct.org/workshop.php?workshop_nr=25
Samenvatting