Traffic safety climate factors in explaining driving behaviours and traffic crash involvement: comparative study among male and female drivers

Abstract

The study examined the explanatory power of Traffic Safety Climate factors in driving behaviours and the probability of traffic crash involvement among male and female drivers in China, taking into consideration different clusters of age. A total of 887 license drivers aged between 24 and 64 completed Chinese version of traffic climate scale, driving behaviours scale, and crash involvement. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted. The result established that male driver’s, reported high emotional engagement, driving violations and traffic crashes than female drivers. Perceived external affective demand (EAD) was more likely to be related to aberrant driving behaviours (ADB), but less likely to be related to positive driving behaviour (PDB) with young and middle-aged male drivers more affected. Perceived EAD was less likely to be associated with ADB and traffic crash involvement of female older drivers. The perceived internal requirement was positively related to PDB, but negatively related to ADB for both sexes with young females expressing high PDB and low probability of traffic crash involvement than male drivers. Perceived traffic system functionality (FUN) was negatively related to ADB, but positively related to PDB for both sexes with male drivers in all age brackets expressing more PDB. As a remedial measure, traffic authorities have to direct their attention towards the modification of traffic infrastructure designs.

Exploring the relationship between traffic resilience and driver behaviors through traffic climate

“…Given the relationship between traffic resilience and traffic climate, increased resilience may increase the perceived safety of road users as it is associated with increased functionality et al, 2014). Supporting the previous studies (Chu et al, 2019;Atombo & Wu, 2022;Üzümcüoğlu et al, 2020b), the results of this study showed that external affective demands were positively related to errors and aggressive violations, and internal requirements were positively related to positive behaviors and negatively related to aberrant driver behaviors.…”

“…Several self-report studies have investigated the relationship between traffic climate dimensions and driver behaviors and crash involvement (Atombo & Wu, 2022;Chu et al, 2019). External affective demands have been found to be positively associated with aberrant driver behaviors such as errors and violations (Atombo & Wu, 2022;Chu et al, 2019) and negatively related to positive behaviors (Atombo & Wu, 2022;Chu et al, 2019). Functionality was negatively related to violations and lapses (Chu et al, 2019) and positively related to positive behaviors (Chu et al, 2019).…”

“…Functionality was negatively related to violations and lapses (Chu et al, 2019) and positively related to positive behaviors (Chu et al, 2019). In contrast, the opposite relationship has been determined for internal requirements, in which the dimension was positively related to positive behaviors and negatively related to errors and violations (Chu et al, 2019;Atombo & Wu, 2022;Üzümcüoğlu et al, 2020b).…”

“…For example, elevated functionality has been linked to reduced crash involvement as a result of increased positive behavior and decreased aberrant behavior (Chu et al, 2019). Nevertheless, direct links between traffic climate and crash involvement are often weaker and mostly insignificant (Atombo & Wu, 2022). In a study by Chu et al (2019), only internal requirements exhibited a positive association with crash involvement.…”

“…Gehlert et al (2014) previously indicated that external affective demands were related to the behaviors of others, while internal requirements concerned the driver's own driving style. While the direct paths from the dimensions of the traffic climate scale to driver behaviors have been previously tested (Atombo & Wu, 2022;Chu et al, 2019;Omidi et al, 2022), the current study model, as depicted in The study was conducted in Türkiye with a cohort of 216 drivers aged between 19 and 32 (M = 22.91, SD = 2.34). Of the participants, 84 were female, and 132 were male.…”