[Safety measures in traffic; how risk compensation affects our behaviour]. / Veiligheidsmaatregelen in het verkeer.

In 2020, more than 600 people died as a result of a traffic crash in the Netherlands and 6,500 were hospitalized after they had sustained a serious injury (MAIS 3+). These numbers are much lower than those in the beginning of the seventies of the last century, when there were more than 3,000 road fatalities. To reduce the number of fatalities, many measures have been taken to avoid road crashes and reduce injury severity. By road design that makes it impossible for road users to collide, by improving the safety of vehicles, and by educating road users. Traffic psychologists often warn for behavioural adaptations that nullify the expected effect of road safety measures (risk compensation). Numerous studies have shown examples of risk compensation in traffic. What is the psychological mechanism behind risk compensation? Which factors enhance risk compensation? And are there any advantages of risk compensation?

Speed choice and mental workload of elderly cyclists on e-bikes in simple and complex traffic situations: a field experiment.

To study the speed choice and mental workload of elderly cyclists on electrical assisted bicycles (e-bikes) in simple and complex traffic situations compared to these on conventional bicycles, a field experiment was conducted using two instrumented bicycles. These bicycles were identical except for the electric pedal support system. Two groups were compared: elderly cyclists (65 years of age and older) and a reference group of cyclists in middle adulthood (between 30 and 45 years of age). Participants rode a fixed route with a length of approximately 3.5 km on both bicycles in counterbalanced order. The route consisted of secluded bicycle paths and roads in a residential area where cyclist have to share the road with motorized traffic. The straight sections on secluded bicycle paths were classified as simple traffic situations and the intersections in the residential area where participants had to turn left, as complex traffic situations. Speed and mental workload were measured. For the assessment of mental workload the peripheral detection task (PDT) was applied. In simple traffic situations the elderly cyclists rode an average 3.6 km/h faster on the e-bike than on the conventional bicycle. However, in complex traffic situations they rode an average only 1.7 km/h faster on the e-bike than on the conventional bicycle. Except for the fact that the cyclists in middle adulthood rode an average approximately 2.6 km/h faster on both bicycle types and in both traffic conditions, their speed patterns were very similar. The speed of the elderly cyclists on an e-bike was approximately the speed of the cyclists in middle adulthood on a conventional bicycle. For the elderly cyclist and the cyclists in middle adulthood, mental workload did not differ between bicycle type. For both groups, the mental workload was higher in complex traffic situations than in simple traffic situations. Mental workload of the elderly cyclists was somewhat higher than the mental workload of the cyclists in middle adulthood. The relatively high speed of the elderly cyclists on e-bikes in complex traffic situations and their relatively high mental workload in these situations may increase the accident risk of elderly cyclist when they ride on an e-bike.

Five road safety education programmes for young adolescent pedestrians and cyclists: a multi-programme evaluation in a field setting.

A practical approach was developed to assess and compare the effects of five short road safety education (RSE) programmes for young adolescents that does not rely on injury or crash data but uses self reported behaviour. Questionnaires were administered just before and about one month after participation in the RSE programmes, both to youngsters who had participated in a RSE programme, the intervention group, and to a comparable reference group of youngsters who had not, the reference group. For each RSE programme, the answers to the questionnaires in the pre- and post-test were checked for internal consistency and then condensed into a single safety score using categorical principal components analysis. Next, an analysis of covariance was performed on the obtained safety scores in order to compare the post-test scores of the intervention and reference groups, corrected for their corresponding pre-test scores. It was found that three out of five RSE programmes resulted in significantly improved self-reported safety behaviour. However, the proportions of participants that changed their behaviour relative to the reference group were small, ranging from 3% to 20%. Comparisons among programme types showed cognitive approaches not to differ in effect from programmes that used fear-appeal approaches. The method used provides a useful tool to assess and compare the effects of different education programmes on self-reported behaviour.

Young drivers who obtained their licence after an intensive driving course report more incidents than drivers with a traditional driver education.

This paper studies the effectiveness of intensive driving courses; both in driving test success and safe driving after passing the driving test. The so-called intensive driving course (IDC) consists of a limited number of consecutive days in which the learner driver takes driving lessons all day long; and is different from traditional training in which lessons are spread out over several months and in which learners take one or two driving lessons of approximately 1 h each per week. Our study indicates that--in the first two years of their driving career--IDC drivers (n=35) reported an incident significantly more often (43%) than 351 drivers who obtained their driving licence after traditional training (26%). Our study also indicates that the IDC drivers underwent almost the same number of training hours as the drivers who had traditional training, although spacing of these hours was different. There was no difference in the number of attempts to pass the driving test. We did not find any evidence that a self-selection bias was responsible for the difference in reported number of incidents.