A Cross Sectional Study of Risky Attitude and Behaviors among Young Vehicle Users

Road traffic accidents are ever increasing throughout the world with the development. This is the price human kind has to pay to cope with the industrialization, hence the economic burden of death and disability due to RTA. Many studies have been done to assess the mortality and morbidity, vehicle design, road design and safety gears. But not much has been done to know the attitude and risky behavior of the vehicle users while on road. Few of the studies have suggested human failure is responsible in 90% of RTA injuries. Hence a cross sectional study was done to know the risky attitude and behavior of medical students of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bangalore.

A Cross sectional study based on survey questionnaire through pre validated proforma. All the genders were included, aged between 19–21 years. Simple computation was done to know the association of risky attitude and behavior to causation of RTA.

In our study only 83 students completed the proforma were considered for the analysis. More than 90% of the students got annoyed of other vehicle users. With respect to attitude and behavior most i.e over 40% of the study members exhibited some form of risky driving behavior and over 30% of them reported more than 4 risky behaviors. The most common risky practices were over speeding (60%), not giving proper signals to fellow road users (56%), blindly reversing the vehicle (48%), overtaking from left (47%), night long drives (47%), not using safety gadgets e.t.c. Around 50% of the drivers wore helmet and 24.1% claimed to have driven while having consumed the alcohol. In our study 25% of members met with some sort of road traffic accidents and more than 60% of them reported to have been exhibited more than 6 types of risky behavior.