A Strategic Approach to Transforming Traffic Safety Culture to Reduce Deaths and Injuries (2018)

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97 Chapter 4: Conclusions and Next Steps 4.1 Conclusion The purpose of this project is to provide state agencies responsible for traffic safety with guidance for a strategic approach to transform the traffic safety culture of road users. The goal is to achieve sustainable improvements in traffic safety for all road users, including non-motorized users. As the foundation for achieving this goal, it is necessary to develop a standard operational definition of “traffic safety culture” and provide an underlying model that predicts the relationship between traffic safety culture and road user behavior. Arguably, the greatest challenge of defining traffic safety culture is being too inclusive about what culture includes. A definition that includes shared thoughts, observed behaviors, and created artifacts leaves very little – if anything – left for the definition to explain or predict. And so, such a definition is useless. Instead, if the goal for using the traffic safety culture paradigm is to change road user behaviors that affect crash risk, then the standard definition of traffic safety culture must be able to explain and predict these behaviors (and artifacts) as an outcome rather than include them as part of culture. And so, we conclude that “Traffic safety culture is the values and beliefs shared among groups of road users and stakeholders that influence their decisions to behave or act in ways that affect traffic safety.” Importantly, we also propose a behavioral model that predicts the relationship between components of this definition of traffic safety culture with the road user behaviors that are expected to change. Based on this definition, we can now identify a traffic safety culture-based (TSCB) strategy as intentionally designed to emphasize values and change beliefs within a specific social group in order to change behaviors (and actions) that affect traffic safety. That is, the transformation of culture was the immediate goal of the strategy, with transformation itself being the specified mechanism for changing behavior. Such intention is evident from the adoption of an appropriate behavior model relating culture to behavior. Indeed, the adoption of such a model is also instrumental to the design and implementation of effective strategies. However, we must recognize that various layers of the social environment also influence one another. That is, the behavioral hazards of any road user group are also impacted by the actions

98 of other stakeholder groups. By aligning the traffic safety culture and actions of stakeholders across the social environment with the goals of a TSCB strategy to change the behavior of a specific road user group, that strategy will be more effective and its safety outcomes will also be more sustainable. Therefore, a strategic approach proposed in this report is to transform traffic safety culture by aligning and coordinating the values and changing the beliefs of all the relevant traffic safety stakeholders across the social environment. Whereas as individual stakeholders can implement individual TSCB strategies that target specific road user group behaviors, the integration of strategies across multiple stakeholder groups inevitably requires the formation of stakeholder coalitions to align and coordinate these combined efforts. However, given that the stakeholders and actions that are relevant to the goals for transforming road user traffic safety culture are context specific, it is not possible to prescribe the content of specific approaches that will apply in all circumstances. Instead, guidance is provided in this report for a general process to support the proposed strategic approach to transform traffic safety culture. The conclusion section will be expanded in the final handbook based on the results of the remaining tasks. 4.2 Next Steps Further suggestions will be provided after all the tasks results have been reviewed. However, at this stage of the project, the following suggestions for future research are anticipated:  A national level data system (similar in approach to those currently used in the CDC addressing other health issues) would be helpful to measure a subset of traffic safety culture for a leading behavior hazard that can be provided down to the regional and state level. In the absence of local resources, this national service could be valuable for traditional and non- traditional traffic safety entities to examine the role of traffic safety culture for their own traffic safety goals.  There are important concepts such as “social capital” and “safety citizenship” that are related to safety culture from other domains that should be explored for their application to traffic safety. For example, safety citizenship is a concept in research and practice within organization safety. By increasing safety citizenship, employees take on organization safety as their own mission to protect the safety not only of themselves, but also the safety

99 of others. Relating this concept to traffic safety, the fundamental goal in transforming traffic safety culture should be to create a culture within society whereby traffic safety is “highly valued and rigorously pursued” (AAAFTS, 2012). In such a culture, the willingness and intention to behave safely is not justified only because of its consequence for ourselves, but also for its effect on others and society overall. In this respect, a TSCB strategy based on safety citizenship would transform the cultural meaning of a particular road user behavior from an individual act (what “I” choose) to becoming a defining element of social identity (this is what “we” do), and then a means of achieving the desired principles for society (safety is “our” priority).