The Importance Of Traffic Safety

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The human factor is a major cause behind traffic accidents (Åberg, 2001 ) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Driving practice, for example, driving in a high speed increases the fatality risk of a traffic accident (Garvill, Marell, & Westin, 2003). Traffic safety experts argues that fast drivers may not get the time to respond to unpredictable driving emergencies that would escalate the probabilities of traffic crashes (Farmer, Retting, & Lund, 1999). The number of road traffic accidents increase by 46% when the speed increases from 50 km/h to 55 km/h (Nilsson, 2000). An estimation given by the Swedish National Road Administration (1999) in M., Warner, and Aberg (2005) if a crash occurs by a car that is travelling at the speed of 50 km/h, 70 pedestrians …show more content…

Reducing speed will consequently reduce accident rate and severity (Kimber, 1990; Nilsson, 1982). Policy makers argue that the cost of speeding shall be handled by passing traffic safety regulation to correct deficiencies and improve the safety of drivers (Berry et al., 2011). Therefore, traffic regulation regarding speeding limit is expected to influence driver choices concerning the posted speed limits (Lave & Elias, 1994). To address these consequences, traffic policy makers are increasingly taking measures to reduce speeding. Most of these measures involve law-making interventions, such as increasing the cost of speeding and increasing the probability of a fine (Paris, & Van den Broucke, 2008). Thus, these intervention measures should be good when they are applied based on empirical …show more content…

These consequences are governmentally provided and legally mandated by society as a deterrent. In Addis Ababa, the city’s municipality has implemented road traffic safety regulations that decree any driver who drove exceeding the legally determine speed shall be punished 160 birr (approximately 8 $) (Addis Negarit Gazeta, 2009). It also enforces that depending on the frequency of drivers violating of speed limit they can be obligated to have one of the following 1. Making him retake traffic rules examination, obstacles examination and practical driving demonstration examination in town or 2. Suspending the driving license for a definite period of time as the case may be or 3. Depriving the deriving license for life. Several studies have been conducted on attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control that make a large contribution to the prediction of drivers’ intention to exceed the speed (e.g., Elliott et al., 2003; Letirand & Delhomme, 2005; Newnam et al., 2004; Warner & Åberg, 2008). However, no study has yet as far as I am aware, examined all TPB components concerning speeding to predict drivers’ mileage and traffic police fines experiences. Therefore, this work aims to explore drivers’ mileage and traffic police fines experiences from the perspectives of the theory of planned behaviour concerning

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