Handbook of Traffic Psychology

Bryan E. Porter

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780123819857
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Transportation & Navigation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The Handbook of Traffic Psychology covers all key areas of research in this field including theory, applications, methodology and analyses, variables that affect traffic, driver problem behaviors, and countermeasures to reduce risk on roadways. Comprehensive in scope, the methodology section includes case-control studies, self-report instruments and methods, field methods and naturalistic observational techniques, instrumented vehicles and in-car recording techniques, modeling and simulation methods, in vivo methods, clinical assessment, and crash datasets and analyses. Experienced researchers will better understand what methods are most useful for what kinds of studies and students can better understand the myriad of techniques used in this discipline.

• Focuses specifically on traffic, as opposed to transport
• Covers all key areas of research in traffic psychology including theory, applications, methodology and analyses, variables that affect traffic, driver problem behaviors, and countermeasures to reduce the risk of variables and behavior
• Contents include how to conduct traffic research and how to analyze data
• Contributors come from more than 10 countries, including US, UK, Japan, Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Mexico, Australia, Canada, Turkey, France, Finland, Norway, Israel, and South Africa

Chapter 1. How Many E’s in Road Safety?

John A. Groeger

University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

Three types of initiative have dominated attempts to improve road safety: education, enforcement, and engineering. The role and understanding of each has expanded considerably during the past half century such that enforcement should no longer be seen in terms of the actions of the police and judicial system; education incorporates at least driver education and public education campaigns; and the potential safety benefit from engineering has long since ceased to be a matter of road surfaces, infrastructure, and the roadworthiness and crash tolerance of vehicles. This chapter makes a case for adding to the three E’s that have dominated the road safety literature to consider exposure to the differential effects of crash-related involvement, examination of drivers’ competencies and fitness to drive in different circumstances, and the quality and timeliness of emergency response immediately following crashes and the care plan for drivers during postcrash rehabilitation. Above all, the seventh “E” in the road safety framework is evaluation. It is argued that in a domain in which a general theory of road safety is unavailable, if possible at all, evaluation of interventions is not only good professional practice but also fundamental to the identification and development of initiatives that can genuinely improve road safety.

1. Introduction

I was introduced to driver behavior research by Ivan Brown, with whom I went to work at the Medical Research Council’s Applied Psychology Unit in 1985. Ivan’s knowledge of the field was voluminous, and his proselytizing on behalf of a psychological dimension to road safety was both tireless and remarkably successful in shaping decades of research in the area in the United Kingdom. If Ivan shaped the UK agenda, Talib Rothengatter (d. 2009), with whom I first began to collaborate in 1987 as part of the remarkably foresighted European Union-funded GIDS project (Michon, 1993), gave form and substance to the behavioral aspects of traffic psychology throughout Europe and beyond. Both would have written this overview chapter far better than I can hope to do.

Although I was, and remain, more interested in the cognitive underpinnings of complex skilled activity, road safety was much more central to Ivan’s concerns. He was the first person I encountered who invoked the “three E’s” mantra of road safety. It is only recently that I found reference to what is, I believe, the original coining of the phrase “education, enforcement, engineering.” According to Damon (1958), Julien H. Harvey, who was then director of the Kansas City Safety Council, gave a presentation in Topeka in 1923 during which he presented a drawing of a triangle with sides labeled “Education,” “Enforcement,” and “Engineering.” Since then, the three E’s have dominated perspectives on road safety, with occasional forays into the literature by safety experts advocating increasing the number of E’s in road safety. I, too, am going to travel this path in an attempt to overview what I consider some of the most important contributions to the literature in recent years.

2. Education

One of the virtues of the three E’s is the succinct summary they offer of what remain the primary parameters of safety. However, in each case, drawing the remit of each “E” narrowly limits not only the scope but also the extent of the potential to contribute to safety. This is demonstrably so with respect to “education.”

Education has come to mean the transmission of an established body of knowledge and skills to those who lack these. In the road safety context, it has less to do with the developing of individual potential, implicated in wider use of the term “education,” and typically refers to “driver education” and “public education.”

Driver education is a term used more widely in North America to cover the preparation of intending drivers for independent driving. It comprises, depending on the jurisdiction, classroom or electronic dissemination of the declarative knowledge base on which driving relies, as well as what is typically referred to as “driver training” (i.e., practical instruction on the operations the driver is required to perform when driving, including the rules that pertain to vehicle operation (Lonero, 2008)). Despite the evident face validity of driver education, the evidence of a direct safety benefit from driver education is scant and equivocal, as a succession of reviews during the past few decades have shown (Brown et al., 1987, Christie, 2001, Ker et al., 2005, Mayhew and Simpson, 2002 and Roberts and Kwan, 2001). Evidence with regard to the effectiveness of the skill and declarative knowledge components of driver education is, to some extent, more compelling. For example, there is very good evidence that the driving performance of drivers improves as they gain behind-the-wheel experience with professional driving instructors or accompanying adults (Groeger, 2000, Groeger and Clegg, 2007 and Hall and West, 1996). However, there is surprisingly little evidence that the classroom or individual education leads to an increase in knowledge about, and attitudes toward, driving. One study showed that those who were pseudo-randomly assigned to classroom or individual CD-ROM- or Internet-supported study performed similarly on a post-course test of driving-related knowledge (Masten & Chapman, 2004). Unfortunately, the study did not include a pre-course assessment of driving knowledge, and thus the comparability of groups before undertaking courses and the relative improvement in knowledge of driving by virtue of course participation are unclear. This suggests that the classroom setting per se does not lead to better outcomes than home study, although the educational value overall is difficult to ascertain. Some studies, which are considered later in relation to exposure, are more encouraging with regard to the contribution of driver education to safety.

Mass media campaigns are also a means by which education might make a contribution to road safety. In discussing their effectiveness, I separate campaigns that seek to change behavior by emphasizing that the unwanted behavior is antisocial, or where there are safety-related consequences of some unwanted behavior, from campaigns that implicate enforcement. Two related meta-analyses of the effects of carefully conducted, substantial, well-controlled media campaigns on alcohol-related accidents (e.g., single-vehicle nighttime crashes) or blood alcohol content levels reveal impressively large reductions in alcohol-involved driving of approximating 13% (Elder et al., 2004 and Tay, 2005a). Although impressive, the fact that no more than approximately a dozen studies, worldwide, over several decades met the rigorous standards for inclusion in these meta-analyses is very revealing of the dearth of peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate convincing reductions on relevant outcome measures.

Differences between the effectiveness of campaigns against speeding or drunk driving (Tay, 2005b) both show the inherent complexity of evaluating public education campaigns and emphasize the very important point that even carefully constructed and targeted campaigns may not be equally effective as a means of reducing all unsafe/illegal behaviors, regardless of what these are. Tay’s study also serves to emphasize the importance of message content, in that different types of unsafe/illegal behaviors may not equally support “response efficacy” (i.e., provide useful and effective avoidance strategies). The importance of this and other aspects of message content, delivery, pre-testing, as well as audience effects and target offenses, has been more formally investigated in a number of other studies. These experimental studies typically use behavioral intentions, rather than measured change in specified actual behaviors, as outcome measures, but they have allowed investigation of the subtle interplay between the threat implied in campaign messages and consequent fear induced and the likely acceptance or rejection of the message among various groups (Cauberghe et al., 2009, Lewis et al., 2007, Lewis et al., 2008 and Lewis et al., 2010). These and other studies have considerable potential to shape message content and delivery, and they provide a coherent account of how and why messages may have the potential to be effective. However, quantification of the actual safety benefits of these and other variables will be a considerable challenge, just as it has been for driver training.

It would be remiss not to acknowledge a final sense in which education can make a contribution to road safety. Many who are engaged in this area have benefited from, and seek to pass on, the expertise and experience of others. As such, those of us in educational roles have the ultimate responsibility for maintaining a...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Table of Contents
• Front Matter
• Copy Right
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Biographies
• Chapter 1. How Many E’s in Road Safety?
• Chapter 2. Driver Control Theory
• Chapter 3. Case–Control Studies in Traffic Psychology
• Chapter 4. Self-Report Instruments and Methods
• Chapter 5. Naturalistic Observational Field Techniques for Traffic Psychology Research
• Chapter 6. Naturalistic Driving Studies and Data Coding and Analysis Techniques
• Chapter 7. Driving Simulators as Research Tools in Traffic Psychology
• Chapter 8. Crash Data Sets and Analysis
• Chapter 9. Neuroscience and Young Drivers
• Chapter 10. Neuroscience and Older Drivers
• Chapter 11. Visual Attention While Driving
• Chapter 12. Social, Personality, and Affective Constructs in Driving
• Chapter 13. Mental Health and Driving
• Chapter 14. Person and Environment
• Chapter 15. Human Factors and Ergonomics
• Chapter 16. Factors Influencing Safety Belt Use
• Chapter 17. Alcohol-Impaired Driving
• Chapter 18. Speed(ing)
• Chapter 19. Running Traffic Controls
• Chapter 20. Driver Distraction
• Chapter 21. Driver Fatigue
• Chapter 22. Young Children and “Tweens”
• Chapter 23. Young Drivers
• Chapter 24. Older Drivers
• Chapter 25. Pedestrians
• Chapter 26. Bicyclists
• Chapter 27. Motorcyclists
• Chapter 28. Professional Drivers
• Chapter 29. Driver Education and Training
• Chapter 30. Persuasion and Motivational Messaging
• Chapter 31. Enforcement
• Chapter 32. The Intersection of Road Traffic Safety and Public Health
• Chapter 33. Public Policy
• Chapter 34. Travel Mode Choice
• Chapter 35. Road Use Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Index