Stages of Official Thinking about Traffic Safety

1 STAGES OF OFFICIAL THINKING ABOUT TRAFFIC SAFETY 

Education about road rules and safe driving quickly became the principal tool within governments crash prevention strategies based upon the (now quaint) belief that if drivers understood what was good, safe practice, they would always apply it It was the birth of the moral approach, which has proven remarkably, and tragically, 

The driver was expected to exhibit the traits of a gentleman goodness, integrity, attention to duty, righteousness, courage, rationality, self-control and virtue. [This] image. .. informed road safety for the first sixty odd years of our motorised history so that the primary road safety message was a repetitive call for courtesy on the road.  

With dramatically increasing rates of motorisation, particularly post-World War II, there was a rapid increase in the absolute number of deaths and serious injuries. Governments began to realise that public education to instil safe behaviours and (soft glove) enforcement to minimise irresponsible behaviours were not sufficient by themselves. The oft-chanted mantra was the 3Es —engineering, education, and 

Eliminating Serious Injury and Death from Road Transport 

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