European car drivers' opinions about road safety measures and in-car devices.

In 1991, a representative survey of drivers was conducted in 15 European countries. This project was named `SARTRE' which stands for 'Social Attitudes to Road Traffic Risk in Europe'. The survey focused on drivers' road behaviour, attitudes and opinions concerning drinking and driving, speeding and seat belt use, opinions on accident causation and on traffic measures, experiences with police enforcement, perceptions of behaviours of other drivers, car preferences, experiences with driving in foreign countries, and risk perception. Altogether more than 17.000 European car drivers participated in the survey. One of the aims of SARTRE was to monitor car drivers' changes in opinions, attitudes and norms over time. Therefore the survey was held again in 1996, this time in 19 European countries and with an improved questionnaire. The new project was termed "SARTRE-2". In the paper the focus is on the following research questions: 1) How have opinions about road safety measures changed in EU; 2) Are there important national differences in opinions and norms concerning road safety measures; and 3) How can we describe the general dimensions along which EU-car drivers differ? To study European differences a non-linear canonical correlation analysis was performed. Canonical correlation analysis (hereafter abbreviated as CCA) can be applied when we are dealing with two sets of variables. Our research problem also involves two sets of variables indicating different nationalities and another set of variables indicating opinions and norms concerning road safety measures. (Author/publisher