Inequalities in Traffic safety (INTRAS): final report

Abstract

Context Given the fact that socioeconomic status and culture both are related to traffic safety – a fact that is abundantly illustrated in the international literature – the questions arise why people of different countries and cultures are in a varying extent involved in traffic accidents and why lower socioeconomic groups and ethnic minorities are often significantly overrepresented in traffic accidents within a country. Objectives Based on an exploration of the international literature, we wanted to develop a theoretical framework allowing us to investigate the mechanisms underlying inequalities in traffic safety and mobility patterns. Most importantly, we wanted to empirically investigate these inequalities in the local Belgian context analysing a combination of accident data, selfreported driving behaviours and opinions related to those behaviours at two different levels, i.e., at neighbourhood level and at the individual level. Part of these analyses was based on newly collected data. In addition to that, already available data sets to explore inequalities in traffic safety and mobility in Belgium were inventorised as a way to facilitate future research on this matter. From a methodological perspective, different statistical matching techniques were tested to allow data integration in the case valuable information on socioeconomic status would be missing. Conclusions International literature clearly demonstrates inequalities in traffic safety in function of socioeconomic and cultural/ethnic background. This finding, together with related inequalities in terms of travel patterns, is replicated to some extent in four different empirical studies conducted in the local context. However, data scarcity, limited operationalisation of socioeconomic status, total lack information on cultural factors (like ethnic background) and of more robust (longitudinal) study designs prevent us from drawing firm conclusions on the more precise importance of socioeconomic status and ethnic origin as predictors of road safety and mobility-related inequalities. Also, formal moderation/mediation analyses are required to verify the theoretical mechanisms that have been proposed and explored in this project as a way to better understand the association between socioeconomic status and ethnic origin on the one hand, and inequalities in traffic safety on the other hand. More research on this topic is definitely required to further advance our knowledge and improve related policy.