Daily traffic volumes have rebounded from pandemic lows in 2020, but perhaps not surprisingly, traffic and pedestrian fatalities have risen in tandem. Maybe also not surprisingly, unsafe driving behaviors like speeding, texting, and operating under the influence continue to impact these statistics. Among the questions are why people engage in risky behaviors behind the wheel and what countermeasures can be implemented to prevent such behavior.
These questions are at the core of the latest Traffic Safety Culture Index (TSCI) survey from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, released in December 2023. The latest TSCI survey identified six driver profiles and examined the social approval and/or disapproval of certain unsafe driving habits.
Dr. Rebecca Steinbach, Senior Researcher for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, joins Carl to provide additional insight into the findings of the latest TSCI survey. Dr. Steinbach explains the six driver profiles, how perceptions towards speeding have changed, and the little things we can do to become safer drivers.
2022 Traffic Safety Culture Index Summary Report: https://tinyurl.com/5awfb3kr
Pedestrian Deaths Have Skyrocketed. Who Is To Blame? via Dash Lewis for Automoblog: https://tinyurl.com/mwxvmr9a
Follow AutoVision News on LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/49jyrd3b
[00:00:00] My name is Carl Anthony, and I work in the automotive industry in Detroit.
[00:00:07] Sometimes that work encompasses future vehicle technology,
[00:00:11] and that's what we talk about here, for the most part anyway.
[00:00:14] This is AutoVision News Radio.
[00:00:19] As daily driving patterns and traffic volumes rebound from pandemic lows in 2020, drivers, 16 and older. Participants were asked questions regarding certain risky driving behaviors, including perceived dangers and the perceived social approval or disapproval of those behaviors. Participants were then asked where they stood in terms of supporting laws and policies designed to curtail such risky habits behind culture index. We analyzed questions that we asked respondents on their engagement in different dangerous driving behaviors to see if we could come up with any patterns. And we found that drivers tended to fit one of six different profiles. So reassuringly, the largest group of drivers in our sample, 41% of
[00:03:02] them were calling safe drivers. And they didn't report to report any of the other behaviors. And our impaired drivers made up 1% of our sample. It was by far our smallest group. And now we move on to drivers who reported multiple dangerous driving behaviors. So 17% of our drivers, we categorized as distracted and aggressive drivers.
[00:04:20] And these were drivers that reported distracted driving, speeding, and aggressive driving.
[00:05:25] would turn 16. And my dad, he wanted me to be ready not just for my Iowa driver's license test, but he wanted me to be familiar with the roads around Northwest Iowa for when I
[00:05:30] was driving on my own and in particular, the two lane highways. So dad spent a lot of time
[00:05:36] covering things like double yellow lines and only passing when I was on a flat stretch
[00:05:42] away from rolling hills that area in Northwest Iowa speeding was reflected in the 2022 TSCI survey. For me, the most interesting and alarming results from this study were on speeding.
[00:08:05] in the morning. And so in the summer of 97, he had the afternoons off and him and I would take his old Chevy Silverado regular cab truck, big long eight foot bed. We would take his
[00:08:11] truck and we would make a lot of trips from Lamar's Iowa to Sioux City, Iowa. So that's
[00:08:17] from Plymouth County, Lamar's is in Plymouth County to Woodbury County. That's where Sioux
[00:08:20] City is at. And you have to take Highway 75 you go through on the way to Sioux City is Merrill, Iowa. And there's railroad tracks in Merrill. And nine times out of 10, you get stopped by a train. Here I am 15 years old. My dad in the front seat of his Silverado, big long eight foot bed in the back. Awkward 15 year old me, hands 10 asked Dr. Steinbeck if there was any logical explanation for why some willingly acknowledge that speeding, texting, and aggression are dangerous, yet they still do them anyway. So this is a good question, and it's one that is difficult to answer. It's not something that we were able to look at
[00:11:02] in this survey, but I can speculate
[00:11:04] on a number of potential mechanisms
[00:11:06] that I think protected by vehicles. And finally, I think there's an element of overestimating our abilities and the abilities of drivers around us. If I feel like I'm a good driver, I of a crash, the speed you're traveling could be the difference between life and death for you or other people. Past research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has found a correlation between unsafe driving behaviors and what a loved one might think. Perhaps the greatest change we can make
[00:13:41] is encouraging the people we care about to drive safely
[00:13:45] and then preaching that message to. And so we need to support changes that put safety first in the system that we travel in and design systems that are more forgiving of people's mistakes. So this might mean engineering changes to road design and vehicle solutions which start
[00:15:00] to prioritize safety over speed. We just, we can't accept that deaths are inevitably