Sociological Study of the Influence of Citizen’s Traffic Ethics on Driving Violations Case Study Tehran

Abstract—In this paper, the influence of traffic ethics on driving violations is investigated and modeled from sociological perspective. The driving violation of male and female drivers is separately analyzed in this research. The models are developed based on the survey results of 215 drivers who received driving tickets in Tehran. In this paper, the traffic ethics is considered as a criterion of drivers’ obligation to obey traffic rules. To evaluate the drivers’ obligation, some social and cultural variables are applied. The social variables which are used in this research include: social anomies, social obligations and social capital and the cultural variables are: influence of media, social-cultural status of people and cultural patterns. The results show that the variables investigated in this paper, as representatives of the human related factors, are able to predict 39 % and 60% of driving violation in male and female drivers, respectively. According to the results, the social-cultural status has an important influence on citizen’s traffic ethnics of male and female drivers. However, considerable difference is observed between the influencing factors on the driving violation of these two categories. For female drivers, the driving violation mainly depends on level of education and media. Meanwhile the influencing variables in male drivers driving violation include: personal obligations, personal confidence, social confidence and belief in inefficiency of traffic rules. Index Terms—driving violation; gender; citizen’s traffic ethics I