Survey

86%-93% of Omani children travel unbuckled in vehicles …. …...30% of drivers do not wear seat-belts………..60% use their mobile phone while driving……….Nearly 50% admit driving up to 28 km/hr over the speed limit…….

A survey of driver behaviour in Oman was conducted in the first phase of the Salim and Salimah, Safe and Sound campaign in February 2005.

The aim of the survey, financed by campaign partner Petroleum Development Oman, was to gather information about the driving habits and perceptions of the population towards road crashes, child passengers and restraints in general.

• In Phase 1 of the survey, conducted in Muscat, Al Batinah, Ad Dakhliyya and As Sharqiyya regions, 360 respondents answered a structured questionnaire in face-to-face interviews.
• In Phase 2, conducted in Muscat, Nizwa, Sohar, Musandam, Sur and Salalah, a total of 130 vehicles transporting child passengers were observed at random at 2 locations (filling station and shopping mall) in each place.
• The survey findings summarised here provided important insights for the film as well as baseline data to evaluate any evolution in driver behaviour and perceptions over time.

Conclusions

• Parents appear unaware of the deadly risks to which they expose their children through their failure to restrain them and by reason of their own dangerous driving habits.
• General level of cause and effect/ road safety awareness is extremely low, including effect of airbags, ‘backseat bullet’ effect and potential for devastating death/injury to unrestrained children.
• Significant differential exists between expressed beliefs and actual practice –perhaps indicative of “rules are for others, it will never happen to me” mind-set.
• Legislation and enforcement by police is a major incentive to restraint wearing
• ‘Buckle up’ culture is relatively weak and lacks conviction.
• Adults are poor road safety role models for their children.
• Fatalism is not a major determinant of attitude to road safety. Only a minority of respondents believe that crashes and death/injury in a crash are inevitable.

Extract of findings

Child restraint use

Child passengers: 0-4 years

• 96% of respondents believe that babies and children are safe held in the arms of a passenger while travelling in a motor vehicle.
• Only 4% of drivers see any benefit in putting an infant less than 1 year in a child safety seat.
• 43% of drivers are unaware of the recommended age children should be secured in a safety seat. Unsurprisingly, 83% are unaware of the recommended age for moving an infant from a rear-facing safety seat to a forward-facing safety seat.
• 20% of parents claim to secure their children in this age range in a child safety seat. However, in the observational survey the vast majority of children less than 4 years did not wear any form of restraint while travelling in motor vehicles.
• 70% of drivers express the belief that children are safer in the back seat and that, in a collision, children in the back will be protected by the front seat. Despite this, in the observational survey, 43% of children under the age of 4 years were travelling unbuckled next to the driver, half of these on the lap of the front seat passenger. The remaining 57 % of this age group were travelling in the back of the car, nearly all unsecured.

Child passengers: 5-17 years

• 42% of parents claim that they always buckle up their children in this age range. This was not borne out by the observational survey when 86% of children aged 5 years and above were observed travelling unrestrained in the back of motor vehicles.
• Another 7% of children were travelling unrestrained as front seat passengers.
• Only 7% of children in this age group were observed with any form of restraint, most of them seated in the front passenger seat.

Read recommended guidelines on keeping your child safe in a car.

94% of children usually travel as passengers in cars driven by a parent or close family member……….46% of drivers admit that they make no conscious effort to drive more carefully with children in the car

Adult seatbelt use

• 30% of drivers do not wear seat-belts on every journey. Nearly half of these do not wear seatbelts on short journeys and 2 out of 10 others do not buckle up in the dark or travelling outside the capital area Muscat (less chance of detection by the police). Half of drivers who do not always wear seat-belts admit that they are more likely to buckle up if there is a visible police presence.
• Reasons given for failure to buckle up rank from discomfort, fear of being trapped or injured by a seatbelt in a crash or laziness.
• The 70% of respondents who always wear seatbelts cite protective benefits and legal requirement as the main reasons. The majority of drivers who wear seatbelts claim they would continue to buckle up even if it were not require by law.
• Overall, 3 out of 10 drivers would not buckle up if not required by law.
• A significant majority of drivers are reminded to buckle up by the activation of seatbelt warning alarms in their vehicles.
• 79% of drivers believe that seat belts are more important for front seat passengers than back seat passengers. However, only 57% of drivers overall always insist that their front seat passengers buckle up. This figure drops markedly to 38% in Al Batinah area, the region with the highest number of fatalities.
• Most drivers do not see any need for adults riding in the back seat to buckle up; only 7% of respondents always insist on back seat passengers buckle up.

General driving habits

• By their own admission, only 30% of drivers concentrate exclusively on driving when behind the wheel.
• 60% of drivers admit to using mobile telephones both to receive and make calls while driving.
• Nearly 50% of drivers admit to exceeding the speed limit by an average 24 km/hr (rising to 28 km/hr in Al Batinah).
• The perception among drivers is that the category of drivers most to blame for accidents are youngsters driving without licences. This is not borne out by official statistics.
• There are regional variations in habits and perceptions. Seat-belt wearing rates are higher in Muscat than in other areas of the country. In Al Batinah, the region which has consistently recorded more fatalities than any other region every year since 1999, the seatbelt wearing-rate is lower, speeding higher and more significantly more opposition exists to the introduction of child restraint laws.
• Women are slightly more safety conscious than males. A higher percentage of women than men always wear seatbelts themselves and would favour compulsory safety seat laws for children less than 4 years.  However, there is less difference in viewpoint between the sexes with regard to compulsory restraint laws for children over 6 years.
• Safety considerations are a distant 6th factor of importance influencing the purchase of a car after price, performance, fuel economy, image and spare parts availability.

NB Respondents participated in the survey on a voluntary basis and with no incentive or reward. However, it should be borne in mind that surveys on critical topics (where sanctions exist for non-compliance with relevant laws) are not common in Oman.  A tendency in the structured questionnaire for respondents to understate negative behaviour such as failure to buckle up, speeding and use of mobile phones while driving and to overstate positive behaviour such as buckling up and restraint use for children would be natural and survey results should be viewed in this light.

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