Collective risk but individual safety

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Abstract
Everybody attempting to reduce road accidents knows that participation in road traffic presents one of the major everyday risks for many people. Road traffic authorities may use carefully assessed risks in their fight against road accidents. These risk measures may be used to relate traffic problems to financial resources. But, too often, objective risk measures are not used rationally. Why not? One of the main reasons is that the public and individual drivers do not accept countermeasures based on these risk indices. They do not understand the motives for repressive measures. This public reaction is something that politicians must be, and are, sensitive to. It seems as if drivers are irrational. But are they really? Here we are facing one of the most difficult problems of road safety work. Most individual drivers and other road users do not experience the risks evidenced by accident statistics. Individual levels of perceived risk are low. But that is also true for certain experienced risks, e.g. lightning. The main problem is probably that individual drivers have inadequate, or even positive, feedback (reward, reinforcement) of their unsafe behaviour. Thus they falsely think they have full control of what is happening in traffic. They are aware of risks, but they believe they can avoid most of them. Others, who are not as skilled, become involved and it is these people whose behaviour is reflected by the accident statistics. They themselves are safe and run no risk. If that is the experience and opinion of most drivers, how can we motivate them to behave more safely?

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