Behavioral safety: background

The purpose of this chapter is to set a level field for all readers, by briefly describing the various methods used in driving and highway safety research. The methods and concepts described below should be familiar to anyone with behavioral research background, or to an advanced student in the behavioral sciences. Still, because (he terms are repeatedly used in the following chapters, and some readers may not be familiar with all of them, they are defined here for reference. 

The committee structured this report so that the first three chapters provide the background information and rationale for the report. Chapter 2 reviews the parameters considered by the committee when defining safety and how to approach it from a practical, theoretical, and statistical point of view. Chapter 3 compares the biological and behavioral advantages of human milk with infant formulas and reviews how infant formulas were developed to meet the biological advantages of human milk. 

The contents of the book are divided into six major parts, each fiirther divided into 2-4 chapters. The first part. Background, Methods, and Models, essentially sets the stage for discussing the substantive issues of this book. Like any discipline, traffic safety has its own jargon, its own measures, and its own theoretical models within which the discussion of the issues is framed. The Methods chapter provides some very basic information on research design, independent and dependent measures, and statistics that are commonly used in behavioral research on highway safety. 

---