Traffic culture of certain drivers in society

The purpose of this research is to find out traffic culture of some drivers in society and to describe the influencing factors on driver behaviours.Under the content of this research, a 75-question questionnaire involving 33 questions on driver attitudes, 13 questions on knowledge about traffic rules, 9 questions on driver properties and 20 other questions was developed as orijinal Driver Behaviour Questionnaire. This questionnaire was applied to 1246 people who are employed by some public and private organizations by sending e-mails and asking them to complete the questionnaire on the web site. In addition, they were asked to self-evaluate themselves as a driver.Participants? driving attitudes towards traffic culture and knowledge about traffic rules were evaluated over 100 points. In addition, their attitudes and knowledge were examined acording to their sex, age, education and income levels, profession, employed sector whether related with highways, driving experience and getting a traffic penalty with the last year. 28.5% of the participants (355 person) are female and 71.5% of the participants (891 person) are male. Average age of the participants is 42.6 ± 10.2, and driving experience is 15.6 ± 10.6 years. It is found that driving attitudes are getting better with age, income level, driving experience and also the driver who had a traffic penalty than driving attitudes are getting worse but they are not relate to profession, education level, employed sector whether related with highways. On the other hand, it is found that knowledge about traffic rules are known better with education and income level, driving experience and traffic penalty, but are not related to age, profession and employed sector whether related with highways. Moreover, it is found that as mentioned in the majority of the literature, men take more risks while driving than women. Participants got 78.2 ± 13.2 on driving attitudes and 67.7 ± 15.4 on knowledge about traffic rules over 100. Average grade of driver self-assesment is 83 ± 13.4. According to these values, drivers were over estimated their driving behaviour.