Characters Of Motorcycle Crashes And Psychological Factors Influencing Motorcyclists In Chongqing City

Road traffic crash now is an important public health problem in many countries. Statistics show motorcyclists are more at risk of being killed or injured in road traffic crashes than any other road users. Motorcycling as a system involves three elements: machine, environment and human. A great deal is known about how to improve safety with respect to the first two of these three elements. However, relatively little is known about how the human factors can be tackled to reduce motorcycle crashes. Research indicates that human factors account for about 90% of road traffic crashes. So the different perspectives of cognitive, personality and social psychology have all attempted to explain the individual differences in traffic crashes involvement. For example, cognitive research has traditionally studied variables such as management of attention and information processing capabilities, whereas personality research has focused upon the predictive value of personality traits. At the same time, social psychological research has attempted to explain differences in risk driving behaviour and crash involvement within the framework of social cognition models. Despite the extensive research within these areas of psychology, few studies attempt to integrate variables from these different research traditions. For instance, personality traits are rarely studied together with social cognitive variables. And these studies are more on car drivers and less on motorcyclists.The present study attempted to integrate these research traditions, in order to understand the characters of motorcycle crashes and psychological influence of motorcyclists on the crashes.Firstly, we investigated 610 motorcycle crashes from year 2000 to 2004 from two communication detachments in Chongqing city, and explored the characters and causes of motorcycle crashes. Secondly, after constructing motorcyclists'riding behavior questionnaire (MRBQ) and four attitude questionnaires about traffic safety, 800...