Safety research for developing countries : the multidisciplinary approach.

Safety research for developing countries can only be conceived on a multidisciplinary basis: to be properly understood, accident patterns must be studied with a background of psycho- sociological data; the local potential for action must be assessed in all the relevant fields, which requires in- depth institutional analysis; and to design adapted countermeasures, it is necessary to investigate locally road user behaviour and attitudes. The paper describes a first attempt at this kind of approach that has been carried out at ONSER, then at INRETS since 1982 and applied to two developing countries: the Ivory Coast and the Philippines.