Predictors of intrinsic motivation behind seatbelt use in a country where current use is low

2013-12-01
Milder, Caitlin M.
GUPTA, Shivam
Özkan, Türker
HOE, Connie
Lajunen, Timo
Context: Seatbelt use is a major determinant of a driver's safety on the road. In Turkey and other middle-income countries, seatbelt use is lower than in high-income countries and contributes to the higher burden of road traffic injuries. Assessing factors behind drivers' motivations to wear seatbelts can help determine appropriate interventions for specific subpopulations. Objective: To analyze the factors predictive of whether drivers who wear seatbelts in Afyonkarahisar and Ankara, Turkey do so because they believe seatbelts can save their lives. Methods: As part of the monitoring and evaluation of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Road Safety Programme, 817 drivers were randomly recruited in Afyonkarahisar and Ankara, Turkey, to participate in roadside interviews. Logistic regression was run on data from 408 drivers who claimed they always wore seatbelts. Predictors were driver's city, driver's age group (30 and younger, 31 to 40, and over 40 years), whether at least one passenger was in the car, and an interaction term between age group and whether passengers were in the car. The outcome variable of interest was whether drivers wore seatbelts because they believed seatbelts can save their lives, referred to in this paper as "selection of Reason 3." Results: The odds of selecting Reason 3 were 2.45 (95% CI: 1.40-4.31) times higher in Ankara than in Afyonkarahisar, 2.52 (95% CI: 1.38-4.60) and 3.65 (95% CI: 1.92-6.95) times higher for drivers aged 3140 and drivers over the age of 40 than for drivers 30 years of age and younger, respectively, and 5.89 (95% CI: 2.02-17.23), 7.22 (95% CI: 1.61-32.42), and 0.83 (95% CI: 0.32-2.19) times higher for drivers traveling with passengers who were 30 years of age and younger, between 31 and 40, and over 40 than for drivers traveling without passengers in these age groups, respectively. Conclusion: Drivers with passengers had higher odds of selecting Reason 3, especially younger drivers who are more likely to succumb to peer pressure. Older drivers had higher odds of selecting Reason 3. Peer groups and peer education campaigns may have an impact. Education interventions combined with extrinsic campaigns can be aimed at younger drivers to increase and maintain adherence in the population

Suggestions

The effect of road safety advertisements on speeding behavior over time: A simulator study
Özkan, Özgün; Özkan, Türker; Department of Psychology (2022-3)
Countermeasures to prevent death and injury in traffic are important for traffic safety. Human error is a critical component associated with road traffic accidents. Therefore, various organizations and decision-makers are trying to prevent risky behaviors via different methods. One of the most used methods of raising awareness and creating behavioral change is traffic safety campaign videos. The focus of the present study is speeding, which is one of the most dangerous violations on the road. The study aime...
Relationship of seat belt use to health and driver behaviors
Simsekoglu, Ozlem; Lajunen, Timo (2009-05-01)
Seat belts are effective safety devices for protecting car occupants from injuries and fatalities in road vehicle accidents. Seat belt use has been reported to be related to some health and driving-related behaviors. The aim of the present study was to investigate to what degree seat belt use can be seen as health behavior or driver behavior. Participants were 252 licensed Turkish drivers (180 males, 72 females) with the mean age of 30.8 (SD = 12.15). A questionnaire including questions related to health-re...
Design, analysis and experimental study of a novel side thorax impactor to be used in pedestrian protection tests for flat front vehicles
Saraç Karadeniz, Sevgi; Gökler, Mustafa İlhan; Department of Mechanical Engineering (2021-10)
Pedestrian protection is crucial and the vehicle manufacturers put more and more effort to make vehicles safer for pedestrians in case of pedestrian involved accidents. Injuries and fatalities are very frequent and severe in pedestrian involved accidents because the pedestrians are much more vulnerable when compared to the vehicle occupants as they do not have any protection like airbags or seatbelts. The current pedestrian protection regulations focus on the tests of bonnet type passenger cars for the head...
Influence of traffic enforcement on the attitudes and behavior of drivers
Stanojevic, Predrag; Jovanovic, Dragan; Lajunen, Timo (2013-03-28)
Traditionally, traffic enforcement has been an important means of improving traffic safety. Many studies have provided evidence of connections between the level of police enforcement and both driving behavior and the number of traffic accidents. In Northern Kosovo, there has been little, if any, traffic enforcement during the last 13 years. This situation has created a very rare research opportunity - it is now possible to directly study the influence of traffic enforcement on the attitudes and behavior of ...
A Multimodal Approach for Aggressive Driving Detection
Kumtepe, Omurcan; Yuncu, Enes; Akar, Gözde (2016-05-19)
Aggressive driving behavior is among the important causes of traffic accidents. Hence, detection of driver aggressiveness has an importance in terms of decreasing the number of traffic accidents. Collected driving data while the vehicle is in traffic can be used to make inferences about the aggressiveness of the driver. In this study, a multimodal method is proposed in order to detect driver aggressiveness. The proposed method is based on utilizing the visual data taken from the on vehicle camera and sensor...
Citation Formats
C. M. Milder, S. GUPTA, T. Özkan, C. HOE, and T. Lajunen, “Predictors of intrinsic motivation behind seatbelt use in a country where current use is low,” Injury, pp. 0–0, 2013, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/43179.