Attitudes towards road safety and aberrant behaviour of drivers in Pakistan

The aberrant behaviour of drivers is regarded as the most significant contributory factor in road traffic accidents in Pakistan. This research is founded on the premise that personal attitudes are key determinant of driving behaviours, and aims to identify the key socio-cognitive determinants of aberrant driving in response to the lack of road safety research in the country. A multi-method approach is taken and three studies have been carried out. Study 1, a qualitative study, based on interviews, provides a common understanding of the road safety issues in Pakistan. Study 2, a quantitative study, used the results of Study 1 to generate an Attitudinal Questionnaire (AQ) which was inspired by the Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB: Ajzen 1991), and a modified Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ: Lawton et al. 1997) focusing on intentional traffic violations. The study obtained self-reports of attitudes, norms, perceived control and opinion of drivers regarding a number of road traffic violations and enforcement as well as their aberrant behaviours. The responses to the statements in the questionnaires were first factor analysed to identify underlying attitudinal and behavioural constructs. Later, Cluster Analysis used attitudinal constructs to group drivers into four distinct clusters, namely the autonomous, opportunists, regulators and risk-averse. In Study 3, the real-world driving behaviours of a sample of the drivers in each of the four clusters were observed using the Wiener Fahrprobe (WF: Risser 1985) technique. The collective results from the studies indicate that the behaviours of drivers are interpretable in relation to their attitudes, and are partly influenced by their socio- demographic characteristics and driving environment. Specifically, attitudes towards enforcement and rule-compliance appear to be the strongest determinant of behaviours of drivers in Pakistan. Results in particular indicate that being affluent, female and student negatively influence driving behaviours in the country. The research also examines the suitability and applicability ofthe AQ, DBQ, and the WF techniques and methods within a Pakistani context. Finally, the research findings are used to recommend targeted as well as general information-based road safety solutions.