It's just not by accident

The role of human behaviour has been elucidated in road traffic accidents since early 1980s. Most of the legislations like use of helmets for pillion riders and seatbelts for cars were implemented around the world during that period. Literature in the field of behaviour studies regarding traffic rule violations suggest role of human behaviour as a cause of road traffic accidents in 70-95% cases.

Steps taken for prevention, such as legislations enforcing traffic rules and awareness campaigns, indirectly change human behaviour, but direct interventions to change human behaviour need evaluation of the behaviour of the population of a specific area. Such studies have been conducted across the world, including in India, but research alone will not prevent such accidents.

The need of the hour is comprehensive evaluation of population to identify behaviour patterns of people and interventions as per the findings of these studies, especially in low-income countries like India where vehicular population and road traffic accidents are fast increasing.

We conducted a pilot study to screen a sample population to get an idea of the behaviour problems related to traffic rule violations so that a structured study can be designed for the purpose of identification of a target population that needs some intervention to prevent their involvement in road traffic accidents.

From 'Traffic Rule Violation: A Weak Link in Prevention of Road Traffic Accidents', researchgate.net