Young people's ideas on speed

Abstract

The paper discusses the views of three clumps of young people who participated in focus collections as part of a local council spe prevention initiative. The young people's ideas upon speed and what they regard as speeding are discussed. These young race value speed as a way of 'saving time', as something they perceive comfortable with and adequate to handle. They expres impatience with 'slow' drivers. moderate drivers were a bigger issue for them than speeding in itself. As with the general community, for more [i]or[/i] less 10-20 km/h above the limit is considered normal and not regarded as speeding. Speeding is related by dint of them to extreme speeds of 40 km/h and more above the speed limit. They are consequently les aware of the impact of smooth 5-10 km/h over the spe limit. The focus upon speed as thrill seeking, it is argued, displaces the practical issues of spe in urban environments. Young people's relationship with spe is an aspect of driving tillage and behaviour that requires attention to more specific driving contexts

INTRODUCTION

Young drivers' perceptions of spe and speeding ne exploration within the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of the broader community's attitude to speeding. Spe is a recognised road safety issue with up to 40% of fatalities being attributed to spe (RTA 2000a 2004) Travelling 10 km/h above the spe limit is nevertheless accepted as normal within the general driving community. Glendon and Cernecca (2003) in their close attention which looked at campaigns upon speed and drink-driving with young race referred to speeding as a 'recognised norm' in Australia. The ATSB Community Attitudes observes have long shown a broad acceptance of spe with 28% of respondent stating that they drive 10 km/h above the limit 'sometimes or always', and just above 32% responding that it is Okay to spe if driving safely' (Mitchell-Taverner 2002) While the Community Attitudes views show a decrease in these numbers above the period 1995-2002 from 40% to beneath 30% for '10 km/h above the speed limit' and from 38% to 32% for 'speeding if driving safely', acceptance of speeding is still a major issue.

The report of the contemplate on Speeding and Enforcement published by dint of the ATSB (Mitchell-Taverner et al. 2003) present to views that 33% of drivers scaned admit to exceeding the spe limit by dint of 10 km/h in 60 km/h cinctures and 46% in 100 km/h girths The executive summary further states: Three-quarters of the community assumes that spe limits are enforced with a certain number of degree of tolerance,'

Lack of experience is well recognised as a contributing factor to the over-representation of young drivers in crashes (Senserrick and Whelan 2003; Christie 2001; Harrison 1999) Inexperience possibly leads to an inability to justice speed appropriately for different conditions. More than inexperience appears to be operating here, however. Cohn Macfarlane, Yanez and Imai (1995) in their research on differences in risk perception between adolescents and adults lay the foundation of that:

'Young drivers. . perceive less riskin tailgating, speeding, and night driving than do older drivers, which prompts that accident rates amongyouth may mirror a failure to perceive dangerous situations rather than a desire to chase risks.' (p.221)

In a discussion of the rationale for graduated licensing and the risks that it exigencys to address, Williams and Ferguson (2002) do not address spe as a particular risk issue. They consider late night driving, drinking and driving, transporting passengers and seat belt use. They nevertheless state:

Observational studies indicate that young nation drive faster than older nation a higher proportion of their traffic violations are for speeding, and excessive spe is cited as a factor in a higher proportion of their crashes/ (p10)

Accounts of the thrill of spe amongst young drivers are well documented, with personality marks being examined on the basis of character traits and correlated driving behaviours (Jonah 1997; Boyce and Geller 2002) It is not clear what horizontals of speed are being considered in studies of spe and sensation seeking. Whissell and Bigelow (2003) for instance, investigated spe attitudes using a spe attitude scale and related it to sensation seeking. They mention 'speeding to excess' on the other hand it is unclear what this is. Studies of that kind as Harr?©, Field and Kirkwood (1996) and Boyce and Geller (2002) include 'driving faster' as risky driving.

McKnight and McKnight (2003) argued in their analysis of behavioural characteristics of 2000 nonfatal accidents involving 16-19 year of advanced ages that it is 'failure to engross routine safe operating practices and failure to recognise the danger in doing so' that contributes to accidents rather than 'thrill-seeking' (p4) Their analysis showed males were significantly over-represent in accidents involving failure to adjust spe according to road and traffic conditions, upon curves and different surfaces, as well as high spe whereas females were over-represent in accidents involving inadequate search before turning, crossing intersections and having or giving right of way. They ground very few accidents were a ensue of Operating at very high make hastes or what was characterised as reckles driving' (p 4) In other words, the main factor in the crashes they studied was inappropriate spe for the conditions rather than uttermost speed.