Committing driving violations: an observational study comparing city, town and village

This article compares observed driving behavior in a city, a town, and a village.

Unobtrusive observations were made at intersections in each residential type. Five violation types were observed: (a) not wearing a seat belt (seat belt violation); (b) not using a safety seat for a child (safety seat violation for children); (c) not using a speaker while speaking on the phone (on-phone violation); (d) failing to comply with a 'give way' sign ('give way' sign violation); and (e) stopping in an undesignated area (undesignated stop violation). It was expected that in accordance with the anonymity hypothesis that the bigger residential areas' rate of traffic violations would be higher. The effects of the residential type, drivers' gender, and age were assessed using the multiple regression model. The stepwise method of evaluation was employed. The model converged on step 3 (Adjusted R square=0.039). Residential type and gender contributed significantly to the model.

Consistent with prior research, male drivers committed more violations than female drivers. Chi-square analyses were used to test the distribution of violations by the settlement types. Overall, more drivers committed violations in the two small residential areas than in the city, with 30% of city drivers, 43% of town drivers, and 51% of village drivers committing at least one violation (chi2 (2)=37.65, p<0.001). Moreover, in the town and the village, a combination of one or more violations was committed more often than in the city(chi2 (1)=34.645, p<0.001). Accordingly, more drivers committed violations in the two small settlements (48.4%) than in the city (30.6%). Possible explanations for the observed results were provided in the Discussion section.

The conclusions of this paper are that drivers in small villages tend to disobey traffic laws. Therefore, efforts have to be made in companies to take this issue in consideration while running fleets in companies located in small places far from the center.