Rating road traffic education

In the context of road safety, improvements in road traffic education have been recognized in several countries as an instrument for reducing road accidents. However, the level of road safety education imparted by different institutions lacks an objective performance measure regarding the level of awareness that different participants in the transport process have concerning road transportation risks. Based on an analytical hierarchy process to weigh the relative importance of different questions, in this paper, the fundamentals of a road safety questionnaire are presented and discussed, including the corresponding references for the contents of each question. This test was designed for six road transport participants: car drivers and passengers; public bus, motorcycle and bicycle riders; and pedestrians. For each of these participants, six areas of knowledge were addressed: applied situations, courtesy and urbanity, infrastructure, safety and human factors, traffic signals and rules/recommendations. The target population for applying the test was the inhabitants of the City of Santiago de Queretaro, Mexico. For a grading scale of 1 to 10, the lowest and highest grades were obtained by motorcycle riders (5.72) and pedestrians (8.84), respectively, which denotes the need for better instructions for motorcyclists regarding road safety.