Analysing the Relationship Among Accident Severity, Drivers’ Behaviour and Their Socio-economic Characteristics in Different Territorial Contexts

A relevant aspect of traffic accident analysis is to identify the key factors affecting road users’ driving behaviour and attitudes. Traditional considerations of traffic safety focus on physical environment, vehicle and road user. Among these, road users’ driving behaviour plays an important role. The aim of our work is to investigate the relationship among road accident severity, users’ driving behaviour and socio-economic characteristics, by comparing data from two urban areas having different characteristics: Cosenza, a medium-small city of the southern Italy, and Granada, a medium-large city of the southern Spain. For this purpose, two surveys were conducted by face-to-face interviews. The questionnaire included an experiment based on the Stated Preferences according to which respondents had to express a ranking of hypothetical driving scenarios characterized by different levels of attributes describing driving attitudes. The data collected through the surveys were analysed in order to characterize road users’ driving behaviour in the two different backgrounds, and to emphasise the main differences between them. The results obtained from the two samples conducted to very different interpretations and showed how road accident severity, users’ driving behaviour and drivers’ perception of the risk of road accident depend on the territorial context where the road users live.