Analysis of the State and Development of Road Safety Education in Spanish Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Traffic crashes are considered one of the major public health concerns, considering that this phenomenon explains a high number of deaths and injuries every year, and around all the world in different groups of population. The road safety education, (or traffic safety education), regarding the complexity of this process, and that it takes place during the complete process of life of individuals, is considered as a key determinant of road safety behaviors and a relatively lower road risk, essentially for road users with more and diverse high risk factors which may explain the occurrence of road accidents, such as young adults. The general objective of this study was to describe the associated factors to the Road Safety Education in the higher education institutions (universities) of Spain, and its relationship with road safety factors among young adults currently coursing a career in this kind of centers. Throughout this study, it was also assessed a set of indicators related with road safety education “outputs”, such as attitudes towards road safety, knowledge of traffic law and signals, risk perception and risky behaviors on the road. This cross-sectional study used a total sample of n=843 (357 (42.3%) men, and 486 (57.7%) women) university students, who answered a questionnaire designed to collect data about their psychosocial characteristics, factors associated with road safety education at Spanish higher education institutions and, finally, their attitudes, perceptions and self-reported behaviors as road users. Besides finding a very low participation of Spanish universities in road safety education, and of its students in these activities or programs, significant measures of association between individual factors and the employed road safety education indicators were found. Gender comparisons show substantial differences on road safety education indicators between men and women, being, in all cases, more adverse results corresponding to the male gender. Finally, it was built a multiple linear regression model, that allowed to establish the statistical influence of the road safety education on risky behaviors on the road of Spanish university students. This study shows that it is necessary to develop strategies to increase the presence of actions related to road safety education within universities, to improve the coverage and quality of the learning process of this subject among higher education students, and to include universities in the development of a multi-sectorial road safety education strategy.