Abstract :
[en] Road traffic injuries remain a major public-health challenge, and their prevention requires monitoring beyond crash outcomes to include the beliefs and behaviours that shape everyday risk. This dissertation examines Traffic Safety Culture (TSC) — the shared values, attitudes, norms, and behaviour patterns through which traffic safety is understood within a society — using data from the third E-Survey of Road Users' Attitudes (ESRA3), collected in 2023 from over 37,000 respondents across 39 countries.
Drawing on 23,669 regular car drivers aged 18–74 in 31 countries, the study applies a Theory of Planned Behaviour-inspired framework to compare self-reported speeding, driving under the influence (DUI), and mobile phone use while driving. Socio-cognitive indicators — attitudes, norms, perceived behavioural control, and intention — were derived through principal component analysis and entered into 96 linear regression models (one pooled and 31 national models per behaviour).
Across all three behaviours, norms consistently showed the strongest association with unsafe behaviour, more so than attitudes, control, or intention — a pattern that diverges from parts of the classical Theory of Planned Behaviour literature. At the same time, substantial cross-national heterogeneity emerged in coefficient size and model fit (R² ranging from 0.26 to 0.70), suggesting that the relative weight of these socio-cognitive mechanisms differs meaningfully by country and by topic.
The dissertation's main contribution is methodological and empirical: a harmonised, cross-national comparison across three unsafe driving behaviours using one consistent analytical framework, distinguishing recurring patterns from behaviour- and country-specific variation. The findings support using socio-cognitive survey indicators as a complement to crash statistics and observational data and offer a structured evidence base for prioritising targets in context-sensitive road-safety interventions — while underscoring the need for longitudinal and measurement-invariance research to strengthen causal and cross-cultural interpretation.
