Rural Road Safety: Drivers and Driving

In 2006, the Scottish Government and Road Safety Scotland commissioned research with the aim of building on current knowledge about rural road safety ( e.g. Scottish Executive, 2005; Hamilton & Kennedy, 2005; Hopkin & Morris, 2007) and a view to gaining insight to feed into future campaigns to tackle the problem of rural road accidents.

The research was sequential and consisted of different methods:

• Omnibus survey: A nationally representative sample of 992 adults aged 17 years and over were asked which types of roads they had driven on in the past 12 months. This was to assess the proportion of the Scottish population driving on rural roads.
• STATS 19 Analysis: Data on road accidents occurring in 2005 and 2006 within three police force areas was analysed to establish the most common factors contributing to road accidents.
• Survey of Car Drivers: 1020 rural road car drivers, that is adults aged 17 or over who had driven a car on a rural road in the past 12 months, were interviewed face-to-face in their own homes.
• Focus groups: six focus groups, involving between five and eight participants, were undertaken with younger men (aged 17-34 years) who drove on rural roads. This was motivated by the need to focus on those most at risk of being involved in a serious or fatal accident on a rural road.

One of the initial challenges was to define the term ‘rural roads’. In the analysis of the STATS 19 contributory factors two definitions were used: “Roads in accessible and remote rural areas” and “A road having a speed limit of more than 40 miles an hour”. The definition that was used to recruit research participants and describe to them what was meant by rural roads was: “A road that is outside of towns and has a speed limit of 50 miles an hour or more, but is not a motorway or dual-carriageway”.