Citation

Boudrifa H, Bouhafs A, Touill M, Tabtroukia F. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2010; 15: 110-123.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

A check-list of 150 items to measure unsafe behavior of road users based on the third person principle was constructed. This study tool was applied on a final sample of 7058 drivers in twelve out of forty eight districts in Algeria. Subjects were asked to mark both the frequency and the degree of danger of each behavior (item) on two different scales of five points. The results were used to classify the 150 items in descending order in terms of their means for their frequency and their degree of danger. It was found that the frequencies of unsafe behaviors are not limited to the driver only, but expanded to cover all road users. It seems that the ordering of the unsafe behaviors is affected by daily social habits and cultural characteristics of the population. This situation might be related the ambiguity of the meaning of the road to the Algerian individual who uses the road according to his spontaneous needs without referring to any norms or references but relying on his own interpretations which do not usually go with the road right. It was concluded from the high values of means that drivers realize the danger of unsafe behaviors well, despite the fact that they do not respect the traffic rules and laws in reality. Moreover, to combine the frequency and the degree of danger, the results were treated by using a syntax program on the SPSS package to develop a matrix of nine categories of road users' behavior after reducing the results on both scales to only three points for each. It was then possible to obtain the distribution of all these behaviors on the nine combinations of the matrices, but most items that had high scores were mainly on the following three categories:1. Frequent and dangerous behavior,2. Average frequent and dangerous behavior3. Less frequent and dangerous behavior.When the technique of factor analysis was applied to the results, it was found that the 150 items are well distributed in nine factors covering behaviors of drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians as follows:1. Dangerous maneuverings by drivers.2. Lack of education and culture for road users.3. Negligence among road users.4. Unsafe driving in urban region.5. Lack of engagement and responsibility among drivers.6. Lack of engagement and responsibility among pedestrian.7. Uncivilized behavior.8. Lack of engagement and responsibility for cyclists and motorcyclists. 9. Unsafe social phenomenon.