Alone or accompanied to school: perceived safety in traffic by parents of primary school pupils. This report describes a study on subjective safety, also called perceived safety, in traffic. Subjective safety in traffic refers to personal feelings and perception of safety in traffic, or to the concerns about being unsafe in traffic. These concerns may apply to people themselves and/or to others. The feelings do not necessarily relate to the actual number of casualties in traffic. Because feelings of not being safe in traffic are unpleasant, people will try to limit them. This can be done in various ways; one of them is avoiding certain modes of transport, routes or times. This behaviour of avoidance can, for instance, lead to parents taking their children to school by car, so that they need not participate in traffic as vulnerable road users (pedestrians or cyclists). The research described in this report investigates the extent to which feelings of not being safe in traffic play a role in the choices made by parents to have their children go to school accompanied or on their own.
Samenvatting