Commissioned by the Regional Committee for Road Safety of Groningen (ROG), the Netherlands Centre for Environmental and Traffic Psychology (COV) evaluated a computer programme for speed offenders. Speed offenders had been stopped by the police force. Before operating the programme, the offenders answered various questions. Two weeks afterwards, they received a similar questionnaire at home. With these questions the attitude, motives, opinions and knowledge towards and about speeding were assessed. It appeared that the attitude towards speeding did not change significantly, although there was a trend in the predicted direction. Comparable results were found for various aspects of motives, opinions and knowledge; there were trends and even significant results in the predicted direction, but also in the opposite direction. A possible cause for this low effectiveness may be that there were less offenders participating than was expected, since there were much less violations in the planned research period than foreseen. It is concluded that in the light of the low effectiveness the use of the programme in a road-side speed action is suboptimal. It is expected to be more effective when the programme will be developed as a part of some remedial course for speed offenders.
Samenvatting