Inequalities in Traffic Safety

Context
Given the fact that socioeconomic status and culture both are related to traffic safety – a fact
that is abundantly illustrated in the international literature – the questions arise why people of
different countries and cultures are in a varying extent involved in traffic accidents and why
lower socioeconomic groups and ethnic minorities are often significantly overrepresented in
traffic accidents within a country.
Objectives
Based on an exploration of the international literature, we wanted to develop a theoretical
framework allowing us to investigate the mechanisms underlying inequalities in traffic safety
and mobility patterns. Most importantly, we wanted to empirically investigate these
inequalities in the local Belgian context analysing a combination of accident data, selfreported driving behaviours and opinions related to those behaviours at two different levels,
i.e., at neighbourhood level and at the individual level. Part of these analyses was based on
newly collected data. In addition to that, already available data sets to explore inequalities in
traffic safety and mobility in Belgium were inventorised as a way to facilitate future research
on this matter. From a methodological perspective, different statistical matching techniques
were tested to allow data integration in the case valuable information on socioeconomic
status would be missing.
Conclusions
International literature clearly demonstrates inequalities in traffic safety in function of
socioeconomic and cultural/ethnic background. This finding, together with related
inequalities in terms of travel patterns, is replicated to some extent in four different empirical
studies conducted in the local context. However, data scarcity, limited operationalisation of
socioeconomic status, total lack information on cultural factors (like ethnic background) and
of more robust (longitudinal) study designs prevent us from drawing firm conclusions on the
more precise importance of socioeconomic status and ethnic origin as predictors of road
safety and mobility-related inequalities. Also, formal moderation/mediation analyses are
required to verify the theoretical mechanisms that have been proposed and explored in this
project as a way to better understand the association between socioeconomic status and
ethnic origin on the one hand, and inequalities in traffic safety on the other hand. More
research on this topic is definitely required to further advance our knowledge and improve
related policy