New Traffic Safety Facts for Instructors from the AAA Foundation’s New Traffic Safety Culture Index!

Looking to stay current and provide updated information in the classroom?  The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has you covered, as its new Traffic Safety Culture Index report is now available.  For the last nine years, the Foundation has conducted a yearly survey about motorists’ driving habits, and the results are always interesting, to say the least.

Some of the interesting findings from the 2014 survey include:

• Three in five drivers (61.3%) say aggressive drivers are a somewhat or much bigger problem today compared with three years ago


• Nearly nine in ten (85%) say this about distracted drivers


• Roughly half (41.6% and 45.6%, respectively) say this about drunk driving and drivers using drugs other than alcohol.

And unfortunately, there is quite a bit of the “Do as I say, not as I do” sentiment among drivers:

• 7 percent say running a red light is completely unacceptable, yet more than a third (35.6%) of drivers admit to doing so in the past 30 days


• 6 percent say that speeding (10+ mph) on residential streets is completely unacceptable, but nearly half (43.5%) have done it in the past month


• 6 percent of drivers say texting and emailing is a very serious threat to safety; however, more than a third (36.1%) read a text or email while driving in the past 30 days, and more than a quarter (27.1%) typed one

The report also contains information about young drivers’ perspectives on distractions, drivers’ support for mandatory driver education for all new drivers, and the real risks of cognitive distraction.

Obviously, these results show that we have a long way to go before reaching the truly safe driving “culture” we all would like to see.  To make it easy for readers to obtain useful speaking points, the Foundation has created both a two-page summary, as well as the full 82-page report.

https://www.aaafoundation.org/2014-traffic-safety-culture-index