ACTIVATING A SAFETY MESSAGE FROM TRUCK DRIVERS MEMORY - AN EXPERIMENTIN A WORK ZONE

In late June 1988, The Swedish Road Administration sent each of Sweden 's 30,000 truck drivers a music tape ''Easy trucker'' with information concerning driving in work zones; it mainly emphasized the fact that road workers are stressed and afraid of large vehicles that pass them too fast and too close in maintenance and construction zones. In this study, truck driver behavior was measured, once before and three times after the release of the tape, in a selected work zone which was kept approximately the same for four months. No change in truck speeds in the work zone was found to result from the campaign either during or a fter work hours. However, the campaign consistently increased truck dr ivers' lateral safety margins with respect to a worker standing at the edgeline about 100 m from the beginning of the work area, in comparis on to car drivers. In the presence of oncoming vehicles neither latera l shift nor compensatory speed decrement occurred. This study demonstr ates that it is not easy to show measurable effects of a campaign in d river behavior; that for any effects to occur, the association between safety message and the proper situation should be clear enough and th at drivers prefer safety responses with no costs, such as lateral shif t, rather than those with even a small subjective cost such as speed d ecrement.