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Infrastructure, enforcement and legislation remain essential — but lasting change also depends on shifting our mindsets: shared values, beliefs, attitudes and norms shape how people deliberately act in traffic. The same shift is desirable for private organisations and public entities, where humans’ actions shape traffic safety.
We define Traffic Safety Culture as shared values, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and patterns of behaviours (habits/common practice) that shape how traffic safety is understood and enacted within a meaningfully defined group of actors in the transport system – road users, organisations, authorities, or other actors.
This operational definition was set up by the TRUST consortium and is based on literature reviews, expert group discussions, and a Delphi survey.
No. Traffic Safety Culture can be shared within workplaces, communities, professions or organisations, as well as countries. Different cultures can exist within the same country. The concept helps us understand specific groups and contexts without reinforcing national stereotypes.
Currently, the strongest and most consistent evidence is for the link between Traffic Safety Culture and safety relevant behaviour, with normative beliefs the most consistent predictor across topics (such as speeding, driving under the influence, distraction etc.) and road user groups. A strong correlation between national cultural dimensions and fatality rates has been demonstrated already. The link to crash rates is therefore also plausible and partly supported, however not easy to measure.
Traffic Safety Culture (TSC) complements the Safe System and Vision Zero approaches. The Safe System can be seen as the formal side of road safety management and TSC as the informal side: what people actually do. Entities that formally adopt Safe System often implement it only partially, with many single measures rarely being coordinated with one another. In many of those cases, barriers are social and political rather than technical.
A Systematic Transition towards Shared Responsibility for Safe and Sustainable Mobility in the EU
