By Lic. María Cristina Isoba, Director of Road Safety Education and Research, Luchemos por la Vida. Argentina

        One of the main lines of action in developing traffic safety involves educating the population to develop their knowledge and attitudes as well as a safe, responsible and supportive behavior on the street with the basic aim of preventing traffic accidents. This is what all experts in this problem know.

         But, where should we start and how should we go about this task in a country where over 7,000 people die every year in traffic accidents – at a rate of 1,200 people killed for every million circulating vehicles – and over 100,000 are injured every year due to this problem? The population at large participates every day, both suffering and inflicting wrongs, attributing each accident to fortuitous and chance actions, taking each tragedy as a personal misfortune, the result of destiny or fate. Meanwhile, the public authorities, who are supposedly responsible for this problem, evade it out of ignorance or by closing their eyes to reality, in order to avoid assuming responsibilities which they believe will not bring them any short-term political gain.

         This was the general situation we found in 1990 in Argentina, when we began to work with Luchemos por la Vida (Let’s Fight For Life), a non-profit organization whose goal is to prevent traffic accidents in our country in order to reduce the morbility and mortality rate caused by this problem.

        Our starting hypothesis was that the high accident rate originated mainly from the lack of information of the population regarding safe behavior in traffic, the result of a total lack of traffic education, both systematically and occasionally in elementary and high schools in Argentina, as well the near-absolute lack of training of drivers, who got their driving licenses with little more than complying with administrative requirements and, sometimes, by showing a basic control over their vehicle in a closed course.

        We became convinced of the need of creating a new awareness in all the population regarding this epidemic that grew in silence and in ignorance. While we gathered international information on the scope of this problem and experiences on how to approach it, we decided to carry out a diagnosis on: 

- The level of theoretical knowledge of drivers in some topics related to traffic safety and accident prevention

- The behavior of road users in the traffic system regarding the topics evaluated theoretically

- The relationship between both results, in order to establish the grade of correspondance between knowledge and behaviors.

        We gathered information by means of surveys made among drivers over 18-years-old touching some key topics (traffic lights, seat belts, alcohol, speeding, circulation on bicycles, helmet use when riding motorbikes, causes of accidents, etc.). These surveys consisted of two sets of questions with multiple choice answers on “Diverse topics on security and traffic education,” given to 628 drivers, from August to October 1991, and “Food habits and driving,” given to 612 drivers, from May to July 1992, in the city of Buenos Aires and outskirts and this information was compared with numerous systematic observations made in traffic of specific behaviors in each one of these topics. There were five systematic observations carried out in 1991, 1992, and 1995 which involved over 30,000 circulating vehicles, in the same area.

         I would now like to comment on some of the most significant results we obtained:

 RED TRAFFIC LIGHT

 - 100% of those surveyed knew the meaning of the red light. However, systematic observations carried out at street crossings with traffic lights in the city of Buenos Aires showed that drivers did not respect the red traffic light approximately 1,903,560 times every day. This is roughly equivalent to 4 red traffic light violations every 3 days for private circulating cars, and 3 red traffic lights every hour for circulating buses, if we divide the number of daily violations (1,903,560) by the number of circulating vehicles in the city (1,400,000).

 DRINKING AND DRIVING

 - 92% of those surveyed knew that  “drinking a couple of glasses of wine or any other alcoholic drink affects the reflexes needed to drive.” However, in a survey of food habits and driving 83% admitted to “driving after drinking alcohol.”

 SPEED 

- 76% knew that “driving at a higher speed than stipulated” increased the risk of suffering a traffic accident. However, in a survey on their habitual speed when driving in highways, 45% admitted to driving at “130 km/h or more on highways.”

 BICYCLES

 - 74% of those surveyed answered correctly that “circulation of bicycles in streets is safer in the same direction as traffic.” However, 45% circulated against the traffic.

 CHILDREN IN CARS

 - 71% of those surveyed answered that “little children are unsafe on front seats, when they are on their own and even if they are held by an adult.” However, 42 % of parents carried their children on the front seat of the car.

 SEAT BELTS                      

 - 67% of the population knew that “the seat belt protects the occupants of vehicles in traffic accidents,” but only 3% of this same population wore seat belt at that time (1991).

 HELMETS

 - 65% of drivers of motorbikes or motorcycles knew of the protective effect of helmets in accidents. However, observations in the street showed only 19% wore them.

 CONCLUSIONS

        These and other topics which we analyzed led us to the following conclusions:

 1)     The results of the surveys indicated a high percentage of correct responses, with a general average of 72% of correct answers. This enabled us to say that the theoretical knowledge of the population was “acceptable” on average, especially taking into consideration the lack of education we mentioned previously.

 2)     The behavior we observed in the traffic system was mostly “unsatisfactory or incorrect”, since it involved violations of traffic norms which imply a high risk of mortal accidents, both for the road users surveyed as well as for others.

 3)     There was no correspondence, but rather contradiction, between the theoretical “knowledge” and the concrete daily behavior of street users. This disagreement indicated a superficial use of information, of “non-significant” knowledge in the deep, pedagogical and constructivist sense of the term. This should really conform “functional” knowledge, used to influence behaviors in those circumstances in which it is possible, and with diverse internal connections between what people have learned and what they already knew through their history and personal experiences.

        These conclusions have an enormous importance when planning strategies to increase traffic security. We know that to inform about traffic norms and safe conducts is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to achieve changes of attitudes and conducts in favor of traffic safety and accident prevention. A good example is the function of the red light, known by 100% of the population but ignored in a disturbing proportion by drivers, an equivalent of 4 red light violations every 3 days. We need to “motivate” drivers to achieve a change of attitude and to develop healthier habits. Even more when the enforcement doesn`t work at all.

        We knew from our own experience that this situation had been neglected in our country, but an investigation which studied “the efficiency of traffic controls in the city of Buenos Aires” showed grave deficiencies in this field with a total lack of proportion between violations committed and tickets made out, an average of one ticket made out every 12,000 “serious” violations. These serious violations generated among the population a sense of virtual “anarchy” in which the failure of the government in this area meant that the law wasn’t being enforced and individuals felt unprotected, without clear rules, left to each person’s own judgement and point of view regarding his or her behavior in traffic.

        Generating a change of attitude is a more ambitious goal than achieving a change of behavior, but it is important to work on this in order to reach lasting effects over time, since attitudes determine, to a great extent, behaviors. Attitudes are built up during each person’s life and are a complex product of individual experiences regarding other people, which are processed by each individual in relation to his or her own personality, emotional situation, environment, previous experiences, etc. This makes up a system of beliefs and values related to reality that determines largely the decisions of that individual in a specific situation.

        From these conclusions, the use of superficial and non-significant information by the majority of the population, the development of risk behaviors in road users,we decided to carry out a general plan of traffic safety education for children, teenagers and adults aiming at creating a new individual and social awareness of the problem of traffic accidents and prevention, in order to develop attitudes, behaviors and habits in favor of each person’s life and those around. A real challenge and also an opportunity to create.

Presented at the 17^th. World Congress of the International Association for Accident and Traffic Medicine. Stockholm, Sweden, 28-31 May 2000.-