Why are the ‘safest’ norms, attitudes and types of behaviour not typical for the safest drivers?

Abstract

One of the paradoxes in road safety research is that middle‐aged male drivers have the lowest risk of all age/gender groups of car drivers, in spite of the fact that they speed more, overtake more and are less oriented towards safety than other groups of car drivers. The paper presents a theory of driver motivation where it is assumed that drivers generally try to maintain a speed they enjoy, and accordingly try to avoid obstacles that force them to choose another (lower) speed. The main argument in the paper is that drivers who enjoy a somewhat faster speed than the average driver will relatively more often be obstructed by other road users, and accordingly be more concerned with predicting other road users’ behaviour than the average driver. Although this preoccupation with predicting other road users’ behaviour is primarily motivated by these drivers’ goal of maintaining a desired speed, it is argued that the information they obtain in order to reach their goal has safety as a by‐product. The theory is tested with data from a survey on driver behaviour and self‐reported accidents.