public perception on road accidents: a case study of mahasarakham city, thailand

American Transactions on Engineering & Applied Sciences

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Public Perception on Road Accidents: A Case Study of

Mahasarakham City, Thailand

Apirath Chattranusorn a, and Boonsap Witchayangkoon a*

a Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Thammasat University, THAILAND A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T RA C T

Article history: Received April 24, 2014 Received in revised form July 14, 2014 Accepted 26 July 18, 2014 Available online July 21, 2014 Keywords: Likert Scale; Driving Behavior; Street accident; Drunk driving; Cause of accident; Questionnaire.

This study surveyed public perception on the causes of roadway accidents in Mahasarakam City area. There are 400 questionnaire respondents from different ages, occupations, and background. The majority of respondents never have an experience of confronting crash. Average perception of all respondents indicates that human is the most dominant factor causing road accidents. In addition, most respondents give high score to drunk driving as the most dangerous driving behavior. Respondents with different educational backgrounds seem to have agreeable perception on most of the items that cause street accidents.

2014 Am. Trans. Eng. Appl. Sci.

1. Introduction Accidents occurred on roads in Thailand are at very high numbers. Motorcycle accident is

ranked at the highest, following with car accident. Accidents are caused by many factors such as

driving behaviors, road conditions, conditions of traffics, etc. This work tries to learn public

perceptions on road accidents, with a case study of people living in Mueang Mahasarakham,

north-east province of Thailand. Questionnaires were used as a study tool. Questionnaires had

2014 American Transactions on Engineering & Applied Sciences.

*Corresponding author (B.Witchayangkoon). Tel/Fax: +66-2-5643001 Ext.3101. E-mail address: [email protected]. 2014. American Transactions on Engineering & Applied Sciences. Volume 3 No.3 ISSN 2229-1652 eISSN 2229-1660 Online Available at http://TuEngr.com/ATEAS/V03/0215.pdf.

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been distributed to the general public at random. There are 400 respondents from varied ages,

occupations, and educational background took part in this study.

2. Literature Review Different French male and female drivers’ behaviors were studied by Guého et al. (2014), at

varied driver ages, by differentiating two types of violations (aggressive and ordinary) three types

of errors (dangerous, inattention and inexperience) and by taking positive behaviors into account.

The results also showed the link between demographic variables (age and gender), mobility

(kilometers driven weekly), the Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) scores and the involvement

in accidents in the previous five years.

In Qatar and United Arab Emirates, Bener et al. (2008) had 1110 Qatari and 1286 UAE

drivers responded the survey questionnaire including the DBQ and background information. The

results showed that UAE drivers scored higher on almost all DBQ items than Qatari drivers.

Factor analysis resulted in four issues, including errors, pushing-speeding violations, lapses, and

aggression-speeding violations.

Vanlaar and Yannis (2006) created an empirical 2D model to see how European drivers

perceive the importance of several causes of road accidents? Kouabenan (1998) studied

characteristics inherent in the analyst of traffic accidents and in the social group to which one

belongs: beliefs, value systems, norms, experiences in common, attitudes, roles, social and

technical practices, etc. Report about public perceptions on road accidents are barely found, and

thus this work is about to present such study.

3. Methodology

3.1 Questionnaire Survey A questionnaire consists of a series of questions including general questions and questions

on perceptions regarding accidents. General questions are information regarding background of

respondent such as gender, age, education, and occupation. Perceptions questions encompass

opinions on causes of accidents and driving behaviors that trigger the road accidents.

Perceptions questions are with five Likert scale:

216 Apirath Chattranusorn, and Boonsap Witchayangkoon

1: least agreeable opinions / perceptions it is the cause of accident 2: less agreeable opinions / perceptions it is the cause of accident 3: moderate agreeable opinions / perceptions it is the cause of accident 4: high agreeable opinions / perceptions it is the cause of accident 5: highest agreeable opinions / perceptions it is the cause of accident

In this study, total 400 respondents are randomly selected from general public. A wide

range of respondents is from different age groups, occupations, educational backgrounds of males

and females. The survey was conducted during June 2013.

4. Study Result and Discussion Public perceptions on cause of accident are compiled as shown in Table 1. It is found that

human is perceived as the highest cause of accidents. This is consistent with the fact that human is

the one who operates the vehicle and drives the vehicle involved in the crash; especially those who

do not followed rules and regulations of traffic law. The lowest public perception is that driver is

unfamiliar to the roadway.

Table 1: Levels of perception on cause of accident with mean and SD.

Cause of Accident Frequencies

x S.D. Rank Levels of perception on cause of accident 5 4 3 2 1

Human 236 (59.0%)

102 (25.5%)

53 (13.3%)

8 (2.0%)

1 (0.3%)

4.41 0.812 1

Car 5 (1.3%)

27 (6.8%)

182 (45.5%)

27 (6.8%)

8 (2.0%)

2.61 0.700 6

Slippery Road 192 (48.0%)

131 (32.8%)

70 (17.5%)

7 (1.8%)

0 (0.0%)

4.27 0.809 2

Dangerous curve 170 (42.5%)

172 (43.0%)

44 (11.0%)

10 (2.5%)

4 (1.0%)

4.24 0.819 3

Inadequate street lighting

156 (39.0%)

138 (34.5%)

83 (20.8%)

18 (4.5%)

5 (1.3%)

4.06 0.943 5

No warning label 151 (37.8%)

155 (38.8%)

73 (18.3%)

18 (4.5%)

3 (0.8%)

4.08 0.896 4

Unfamiliar to the roadway

0 (0.0%)

13 (3.3%)

68 (17.0%)

171 (42.8%)

148 (37.0%)

1.87 0.808 7

3.50 0.819

For driving behavior, it is found that drunk driving is perceived as the highest cause of

accidents, as shown in Table 2. This comes from the fact that Thailand has high number accidents


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from drunk driving especially during the Thai New Year festival. The second highest perception

on cause of accidents is about using mobile phone while driving.

Table 2: Levels of perception on driving behavior causing road accident, with mean and SD.

Accident due to driving behavior

Frequencies

x S.D. Rank Levels of perception on driving behavior causing accident

5 4 3 2 1 Drunk driving 183

(45.8%) 148

(37.0) 63

(15.8) 6

(1.5) 0 4.27 0.777 1

Driving without helmet

1 (0.3%)

10 (2.5)

77 (19.3)

190 (47.5)

122 (30.5)

1.96 0.786 6

Violation of traffic signals

2 (0.5%)

49 (12.3)

123 (30.8)

152 (38.0)

74 (18.5)

2.38 0.940 5

Driving over speed limit

2 (0.5%)

61 (15.3)

177 (44.3)

120 (30.0)

40 (10.0)

2.66 0.872 3

Not wearing seat belt

0 (0.0%)

61 (15.3)

149 (37.3)

138 (34.5)

52 (13.0)

2.55 0.903 4

Using mobile while driving

82 (20.5%)

115 (28.8)

135 (33.8)

45 (11.3)

23 (5.8)

3.47 1.110 2

2.97 0.930

From Figure 1 public perception on cause of accident classified by age group, human factor

and dangerous curve are the most concern for age over 36. Unfamiliar to the roadway system is

the most worry for age under 15, compared to other age group.

Figure 1: Public perception on cause of accident classified by age group.


Figure 2: Public perception on cause of accident classified by educational background.

From Figure 2, public perception on cause of accidents classified by educational background

seems to be alike, except that respondents with high school background seems to think that

inadequate street lighting is the factor that causes accidents, compared to other educational

backgrounds.

Figure 3: Public perception on cause of accident classified by career.

From Figure 3, non-office workers’ perceptions show that human is the major cause of

accident. Private business owners’ perceptions indicate that slippery road and dangerous curve

are major cause of roadway accident.

Age under 15 perceives drunk driving as the cause of roadway accident with averaged scale

0 1 2 3 4 5


No warning Label

Street Light not inadequate

Dangerous Curve

Slippery Road

Car

Human

Over bachelor's Degree

bachelor's Degree

subordinate Degree

high school

junior high school

Primary school

0 1 2 3 4 5


No warning label

Inadequate street lighting

Dangerous curve

Sliperry road

Car

Human

Non-office Worker

Private Business Owner

Government officer

Company Employee

Agriculturist

Student


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almost 5, as shown in Figure 4. This factor seems to decrease as age of respondents increase.

Respondents with age under 15 seems to be less worry about using mobile phone while driving, but

respondents with higher ages seem to worry more about this, especially for ages over 36.

Figure 4: Public perception on driving behavior causing road accident classified by age group.

Figure 5: Public perception on driving behavior causing road accident classified by age group

From Figure 5, respondents with high school background seems to visualize that all driving

behavior factors causing accidents more than respondents with other educational background,

except driving without helmet.

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

using mobile while driving

not wearing seat belt

Driving over Speed Limit

Violent of traffic Signal

Driving without Helmet

Drunk Driving

Over 3626 - 35

15 - 25

Under 15

0 1 2 3 4 5

using mobile while driving

not wearing seat belt

Driving over Speed Limit

Violent of traffic Signal

Driving without Helmet

Drunk Driving

Over bachelor's Degree

bachelor's Degree

subordinate Degree

high school

junior high school

Primary school


Figure 6: Public perception on driving behavior causing road accident classified by career.

Respondents with different careers show their respective perceptions on driving behavior

causing road accidents, Figure 6. Most of these are of similar perceptions. However, private

business owners seem to think that violations of traffic signals and using mobile while driving are

likely to cause more road accident compared to other careers.

5. Conclusion This study surveyed 400 people from Mahasarakham City, Thailand, during June 2013. All

respondents have different ages, genders, occupations, and educational backgrounds. All

respondents point out that human is the most influential factor causing accidents. In addition,

respondents give high score to drunk driving as the most dangerous driving behavior.

Respondents with different educational backgrounds seem to have agreeable perception on most of

the item that cause street accidents.

6. References Bener, A., Özkan, T., & Lajunen, T. (2008).The driver behaviour questionnaire in arab gulf

countries: Qatar and united arab emirates. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 40(4), 1411-1417.

Guého, L., Granie, M. A., &Abric, J. C. (2014).French validation of a new version of the Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) for drivers of all ages and level of experiences. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 63, 41-48.

0 1 2 3 4 5

Using mobile while driving

Not wearing seat belt

Driving over speed limit

Violation of traffic signals

Driving without helmet

Drunk driving

Non-office Job

Private Business Owner

Government officer

Office Employee

Agriculturist

Student


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Kouabenan, D. R. (1998). Beliefs and the perception of risks and accidents. Risk Analysis, 18(3), Guého, L., Granie, M. A., &Abric, J. C. (2014).French validation of a new version of the Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) for drivers of all ages and level of experiences. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 63, 41-48.

Vanlaar, W., & Yannis, G. (2006). Perception of road accident causes. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 38(1), 155-161.

Apirath Chattranusorn is a mater candidate in the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Thammasat University. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Sirinhorn International Institute of Technology (SIIT), Thammasat University. He is interested in applying technologies to everyday life.

B. Witchayangkoon is an Associate Professor of Department of Civil Engineering at Thammasat University. He received his B.Eng. from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi with Honors in 1991. He continued his PhD study at University of Maine, USA, where he obtained his PhD in Spatial Information Science & Engineering. Dr.Witchayangkoon current interests involve appications of emerging technologies to engineering.

Peer Review: This article has been internationally peer-reviewed and accepted for publication according to the guidelines given at the journal’s website.


public perception on road accidents: a case study of mahasarakham city, thailand

Science

road accidents

street accidents

questionnaire respondents

introduction accidents

majority of respondents

dangerous driving behavior

causes of roadway accidents

faculty of engineering