Road safety research shows alarming confidence gap between road users and experts

New road safety research across ten major vehicle-producing markets suggests there is a worrying gap between road user confidence and what the people in charge of designing, building and operating mobility systems consider to be safe.

The research has been carried out by the Economist Enterprise, with support from industry-leading braking supplier, Brembo. The research has pulled data from ten markets, including Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the UK and the US.

The study is called ‘Safety in motion: Driving trust in modern mobility’, and surveyed road users across these markets as well as transport experts, and the results delivered a pretty alarming disparity between the two. 

While the above-mentioned markets are extremely popular in the four-wheel segment, that remains true with regards to motorcycles, too, with many of the major brands operating out of Japan, China and Italy. Markets such as the UK, the US, Germany and France are also some of the biggest in terms of sales for many of the major brands.

According to the Economist Enterprise, around 1.2 million people are killed on the roads every year, despite nine in ten people saying they feel safe as part of their day-to-day travel. Potentially more worrying is the fact that the disparity in confidence between road users and transport experts is widest in markets with some of the worst road safety records.

Jean Todt, UN Secretary-General's special envoy for road safety, said: 

“The research makes clear that road users are far more confident in the safety of their daily travel than mobility experts. This is a serious concern. Trust is essential for mobility, but overconfidence can cause people to take unnecessary risks.”

A lot of the public confidence revealed in this study comes from three markets in particular; Brazil, China and India. In Brazil, there is a trust gap of 66 per cent between public road users and transport experts. That rises to 79 per cent in China, and 82 per cent in India.

Additionally, the gap in road safety trust is no smaller than 12 per cent in any of the ten markets. Many of the gaps are above 40 per cent, with South Korea offering the smallest disparity at 12 per cent. The second lowest gap is found in Japan (16 per cent), while the third lowest (36 per cent) is found in the UK.

Matteo Tiraboschi, executive chairman of Brembo, added: 

“Closing the trust gap requires collective action across the mobility ecosystem. Industry must continue to innovate responsibly, policymakers must create effective regulatory frameworks and together they must help people understand both the capabilities and the limitations of new technologies.”

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