Abstract
This article describes the Driving Cultures research, the cultural importance of the car and the psychological approaches central to research in the field of road safety and investigations of the over–representation of young people in crashes. The aim of the article is to outline driving as a cultural practice drawing on the experiences of young people as described in focus groups in order to show how cultural research can contribute to a social concern such as traffic injury and death.
Highlights
The car is a dominant feature of life in Australia
International and local research suggests that young drivers are more likely to speed, more likely to engage in risky behaviours on the roads, have a higher risk of crashing with passengers in the car, lack experience and have a tendency to feel overconfident and to over-estimate their level of skill.[3]
The young driver ‘problem’ is a phenomenon of Western countries that has become more apparent as more young people are able to gain access to cars and more are gaining their licenses as soon as they are old enough; this is the case in Australia
Summary
The car is a dominant feature of life in Australia. This enthusiastic embrace of cars is due in part to the vast distances and relatively low population size, but it is due to a longstanding emphasis on individual privacy and mobility. Many recent examinations of car cultures focus on the types and uses of vehicles within different ‘subcultures’.18 In contrast to this concern with car cultures, the central concern of our program of research is with driving cultures, with the ways in which cars are articulated, and with the particular driving styles through which relations to the roads and traffic are expressed.
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