The ESRA survey: cross national initiative to monitor road users’ attitudes and self-declared behaviour

The overall aim of the ESRA project is to provide scientific support to road safety policy by generating comparable national data on the current road safety situation. The first ESRA survey was conducted online using representative samples (N=1,000) of the national adult populations in 25 countries across the world. The field work was carried out in two waves: (1) June/July 2015, and (2) November 2016. In total, the first ESRA survey covers almost 27,000 respondents, among which more than 16,000 regular car drivers. The subjects covered in the survey are, amongst others: ‘self-declared behaviour in traffic’, ‘acceptability of unsafe traffic behaviour’, and ‘support for road safety policy measures’. The objective of this paper is to give an overview of some key results of this survey. The ESRA project has shown the feasibility and the added value of joint data collection by a network of road safety organisations. The intention is to extend the ESRA survey to an increasing number of countries and to repeat it on a triennial basis.