Aberrant Behavior Among Drivers

Among different types of aberrant behaviours, road traffic violations are the most crucial that cause definite risk to other road users as well. (e.g. see Evans, 1991; Parker, Reason, Manstead, & Stradling,1995; Stradling & Meadows, 2000). Number of injuries and death due to road traffic accidents in developed countries are reduced due to extensive research, technological innovation, safety culture and successful enforcement of law. However, there is lack of impressive body of studies demonstrating causes and effects of accidents relating to developing countries (Downing, 1991). The research findings of road safety of developed countries cannot be transferable to developing countries as the profile of both the worlds differ differs in terms of road and traffic conditions, culture, resources, socio economic levels, behaviours and knowledge of road users.

Considering gravity of the situation it is necessary to transfer some solution of developed countries to developing countries. Their appropriateness needs to be considered in relation to problems and conditions prevailing in individual countries (Baguley & Jacobs, 2000).Therefore, considering how little is known about effectiveness of local safety measures, particularly generality of results for different countries and traffic cultures, it is suggested that main contribution of researchers from a country with a relatively high safety standard can be to provide tools to assess and evaluate such safety measures (Almqvist &Hydén, 1994).

In Pakistan drivers are held responsible for most of the road traffic accidents without knowing anything about drivers’ behaviour. At least 70% of road accidents are due to road users mistakes. (Jacobs & Sayer, 1984).The fatality rate on the country’s road network remains among the highest in the world at around 5565 fatalities per year (over 30 accidents per 10,000 registered vehicles). This is considerably above the countries with the lowest number of fatalities such as the UK (3298 reported fatalities per year) despite the fact that Pakistan is six times less motorized than the UK (WHO, 2009). For Lahore, the second most populated city of Pakistan and fortieth of the world, 2010s statistics reveal that 332 people lost their lives while 27,264 got injured in less than a year due to careless driving, speeding or wrong-turns. The National Injury Survey of Pakistan (NISP) reports that most injuries in the country occur to persons aged between 16 and 45 years (Ghaffar, Hyder, &Masud, 2004).

These accidents are disproportionately affecting poorer class of Pakistani society and have pushed many families further into poverty by the loss of their breadwinners. The economic losses for the country are estimated at over 2% of Gross Domestic Product (ADB, 2007). Considering the present situation this research is carried out to study the precrash phenomenon while focusing on human side of road traffic accidents. As international road traffic violations are considered as the most risky type of abberant behaviours. So it is decided to study different types of abberant behaviours of drivers on the country roads which they executes on the roads while driving. This research also attempts to explore influence of personal characteristics on aberrant behaviours. It is hypothesized that drivers’ behaviours are attributable to their personal characteristics. For example, the literature argues that road safety is a social problem and personal factors play a vital role in guiding and shaping of drivers behaviours.

Particularly, research work in psychological sciences demonstrates its close association with individuals’ socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The variables such as age, gender and exposure are all known to be correlated with accident involvement (Iversen &Rundmo, 2004). It is noted that high rate of RTVs is significantly associated with those drivers who are young, male and have high annual mileage i.e. exposure (Hennessy & Wiesenthal, 2005). Therefore, this paper investigates the influences of personal characteristics on road traffic violation behaviour of sample of drivers from Pakistan.