Why and How Traffic Safety Cultures Matter when Designing Advisory Traffic Information Systems

Paper in proceeding, 2016

With an increased number of both cars and drivers in the world, it is of great importance to design well-functioning driver support systems for them, in order to reduce the number of accidents. Despite the fact that the growing markets can be found in Asia, most advisory traffic information systems (ATIS) are designed for, and adapted to, the western market, and its predominant traffic safety cultures (TSCs). However, traffic safety cultures differ between different parts of the world, and this in turn affects how drivers respond to advisory traffic information. In our study, we designed an ATIS to accommodate two different traffic safety cultures. Our findings show that although drivers belonging to both TSCs drove more safely with our ATIS than without, they still responded very differently to it, using it to support their different driving strategies. This implies that the traffic safety culture of the driver cannot be ignored; ATIS designers need to study and understand the TSC they are designing for.