Assessing traffic-generated "dread" risk

In this paper the authors focus on the problems generated by the propensity of British parents to take their children to school by car. This is an example of how, while people "think global" in the face of common environmental problems, they also "act local", producing local outcomes that can vary considerably. The numbers of children being driven to school in Britain are well ahead of those in other countries despite there ostensibly being a common awareness of Dread Risk (Slovic, 1987) from car-borne pollutants. Clearly, common problems are mediated by local circumstance; but how to analyse the problem? Since Slovic put car-generated risks alongside other major risks including nuclear war, and since reactions to nuclear war risk have been well documented, the authors seek in this paper to draw some analogies. (A)