Many schools of thought in the causation of accidents have reached a common agreement about the causes of accidents that the technological improvements in the design and construction of motor vehicles do very little in minimizing road accidents without proper and adequate driver training. In more industrialized countries, which have adequate driver training resources and facilities, giant steps have been taken which have produced encouraging results in minimizing road traffic accidents and improving road safety. In developing countries however, where technical facilities, training material and financial resources are not readily available, the training of drivers is at a low level and therefore improvement in road safety is regrettably slow. Countries with low literacy levels and a high level of unemployment are faced with the problem of having the greater percentage of drivers being illiterate. The fact is that most literature on driving and traffic education is written in English and not much has been done in translating it into the vernaculars of those countries. The electronic media, which is known to be an effective means of disseminating educative information to listeners, is sometimes not as effective because most listeners prefer listening to musical programmes than listening to those in traffic education. Radio stations for the benefit of drivers have introduced special radio programmes, but regrettably, commercial vehicle drivers would rather listen to pop music than traffic education programmes (A). For the covering abstract see ITRD E217780.
Samenvatting