The present paper describes part of a larger research project being conducted by the Driver Behaviour Research Group at the University of Manchester, under contract to the Transport and Road Research Laboratory. The focus of this research has been on driver violations (behaviours such as speeding or drink-driving) that are known to be risky but are nevertheless carried out more or less deliberately. It has been shown that it is these sorts of driver behaviour (as opposed to driver errors, such as misjudging an overtaking gap, or failing to see a Give Way sign) that are related to accident involvement. This makes it important to understand why drivers commit violations. In order to do this a model of human social behaviour, known as the Theory of Planned Behaviour, is applied to the study of intentions to commit driving violations. This paper reports some of the findings using this approach, showing that more violation-prone groups of drivers (i.e., those who are young and those who are male) differ from other, statistically safer groups with respect to their beliefs about the likely consequences of committing such violations, evaluations of the goodness or badness of those consequences, beliefs about their ability to resist committing violations, and perceptions of how others expect them to behave. Armed with this knowledge, it should be possible to devise more effective countermeasures, in the form of persuasive communications that attack those beliefs, values and perceptions that characterise the persistent violator.
Samenvatting