Published: May 2017 | Category: Integrated land use and transport systems , Research programme , Research & reports | Audience: General
This project aimed to understand time saving as a motivation for New Zealand drivers’ speeding behaviour in the context of other motivations for speeding, and to investigate the effect of education designed to improve participants’ understanding of the costs and benefits of speeding.
The project consisted of four parts: an initial survey on attitudes, education for drivers, a follow-up survey, and collection of real driving data from a small sub-sample of drivers.
Results showed that while some drivers sped to save time, drivers more strongly agreed they chose not to speed due to the safety risk and penalties if caught speeding. Respondents tended to overestimate the time savings at high speeds and underestimate the time savings at lower speeds. Most drivers were aware that increasing speed above 100km/h would use more fuel and the majority gave estimates of the fuel savings close to the correct amount.
Following education, drivers’ preferred driving speed and the speed they considered to be speeding decreased. Fewer drivers said they chose to speed because they believed it was safe to do so or because of the influence of other drivers. Drivers did not improve in their ability to accurately estimate travel time savings from increased speed; however, they gave lower estimates for the amount of time that would be saved by increasing speed.
Keywords: fuel, speed, speed choice, survey, travel time
