Evaluating the effectiveness of a road safety education intervention for pre-drivers: an application of the theory of planned behaviour.

BACKGROUND Young drivers are overrepresented in road traffic fatalities and collisions. Attempts to address this problem with pre-driver education have not met with unambiguous success. However, there is a lack of research on whether pre-driver education can change psychological antecedents to behaviour. AIMS The framework of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was employed to assess the effectiveness of an educational intervention used across the UK that aims to improve attitudes to road safety in pre-drivers. SAMPLE(S) Secondary school students aged 15-16 years participated in the research, drawn from 12 schools in the UK. A total of 199 students took part in Expt 1 and 430 in Expt 2. METHOD Expt 1 employed a within-participants design to measure any changes in road safety beliefs from pre- to post-intervention and 5-month follow-up. Expt 2 used a between-participants design to test whether any changes were genuine or due to experimenter effects. RESULTS Results of Expt 1 revealed a small, short-term improvement in some pre-driver beliefs immediately following the educational intervention, but no effect on other beliefs, and some evidence of unintended outcomes. The small, significant improvements found in Expt 1 were replicated in Expt 2, which is consistent with there being a genuine effect. CONCLUSIONS Considering evidence from both experiments suggests the effectiveness of road safety education interventions are at best short term, and limited to some but not all psychological factors, with some risk of unintended consequences.

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