TRAFFIC

A Human Behaviour Perspective

Key Learnings

Cognitive biases

Behavioral Theories

Theory of Emotion (Plutchik's)

Tools used

Survey Forms

Laddering

Fly on the wall

Shadowing

Focus Group

Indian roads are a mix of pedestrians, non-motorized and motorized traffic and lack of appropriate behaviors and violation of traffic rules leads to high rate of vulnerability on roads. A lot needs to be done to change the deep-rooted behavior of the same.

Analyzing traffic as a behavior problem rather than a pure infrastructure issue, aim to tapping into the root cause of the problem with the help of research tools & subsequently giving solutions that fits the context.

This was a project that we did with Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Project summary

APPROACH

This project was divided in two parts.

First part was stand alone research done to gauze the traffic scenario in India. Here we did general literature research on road traffic of India. My area of work was "Traffic Safety on road".

Second part started when we collaborated with Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad. With his inputs and our understanding we contextualized our research and design solution towards "Traffic Compliance at Dafnala Junction".

1

TRAFFIC SAFETY

OVERVIEW

Road traffic safety can be defined as the methods and measures which prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured.

Road users include: Pedestrians, Non-Motorists and Motorists.

Traffic safety is emerging as a major social concern in the country. An average mortality rate is 100,000 persons dying in road accidents.

Our research focused on understanding the perception of traffic safety among drivers in the age group 18-35 years. The topic covers following areas:

The quantity and quality of vehicles they own and the frequency of use.
The areas in which they feel safe and unsafe.
Factors responsible for accidents.
The awareness and use of safety measures and precautions, they take while driving.

PART

Part 1

TAKEAWAYS FROM SURVEY

Few takeaways from the first round of survey was:

Drivers of 2-wheeler are maximum i.e 55%.
29% say that they feel unsafe on two wheeler.
It also says, 48% of road accidents were experienced by 2-wheeler, which is more than any other vehicles combined.

Further we narrowed down our research topic to safety on roads for two wheeler. Based on this another questionnaire was designed. Few takeaways from the questionnaire are as follows:

47% people chose safety as their prior concern while driving a two-wheeler but on the other hand 95% of people don’t associate following rules and regulation as safety.
81% people say that carrying helmet just before driving is their priority while when asked the rule they will break the most 42.4% while driving is not wearing helmet.
88.1% of people say that honking annoys them and makes them anxious while driving two-wheeler.

Survey Questionnaire 1 | Survey Questionnaire 2

INSIGHT DRAWN

People tend to skip carrying helmets when they are going to nearby places. Or carry it but prefer wearing it only when they see traffic police on the route.

Honking is major cause of anxiousness while people drive two wheeler.

From the Secondary Research done & Survey Questionnaires filled we drew major insights that are as follows:

When under vigilance people are more conscious and adhere to traffic rules and regulations.

2

PART

traffic compliance

OVERVIEW

The next part of this project began after our meeting and discussion with the Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad, Shri AK Singh and his team.

Based on the real time issues faced by them, we were assigned the area of Increasing compliance at one of the busiest and the important junction, Dafnala Junction.

An important Crossroad where four major roads meet (Airport Road, Riverfront Road, Shahibag, Dafnala)

Already reported compliance rate of 70-80% (as per CEPT's study)
heavy police deployment to ensure traffic compliance, makes it easy to monitor

Increase in traffic compliance will make the citizens more self compliant/ discipline/ governing. This will result in a more organized traffic scenario with minimum police/ official deployment.

PART 2

PROCESS & methodology

Dafnala Crossroad, Ahmedabad

1. Understanding the Context

2. Defining Intervention Areas

3. Secondary Research

4. Primary Research

5. Analysis

6. Insight

7. Ideation/ Solution

Use Helmet, Use of Zebra crossing

Case Studies, Literature Review, Cognitive theories & biases

Using various research methods like: Fly on the wall, observations, Interviews, Activity mapping, behavior mapping, focus group, Laddering, Shadowing, Video-Photo Analysis

Analyzing collected data from primary & secondary research

Noticing pattern & generating insight

Designed Solution & prototyping

Implementing the designed solution with help of authorities

8. Implementation

Area of intervention

Use of zebra Crossing

Use of Helmet

OBJECTIVE

Through our study, we aim to address the following questions:

What is causing commuters to violate the above mentioned rules?
How can we make people actively and intuitively and voluntarily compliant?
How can we incentivize compliance? (psychological incentives)
How can we retain compliant citizens?
How can we make it a social/community behaviour?
How can we make non-compliant citizens feel guilty?
How can we gauge immediate results?
How can we make this into a self-sustaining and replicable model?

Use of Helmet

Key Observations

There were more defaulters at night than day.
People were following other people.
Don’t hesitate to pay 100/-
Most citizens blame the system and policemen.
The defaulters they were aware of the importance of wearing a helmet.
Most of the people were wearing low quality alternatives.
Believe that helmet is not required at slow speed or in the city.
The officials did wear the helmet and followed rules as they felt a sense of responsibility and would feel guilty otherwise.

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

Loss aversion

False sense of urgency (Time -saving Bias) saving time is perceived as a bigger incentive.
Embarrassing factor/ shame-coward act

Trust Issues (Ambiguity Bias)

In police department (Reactance/ Reverse Psychology)
In safety from Helmet

Ability to look only short term benefits and not long term safety.

Casual attitude towards safety (Illusion Of Control) (Normalcy Bias)(Ostrich Effect)(Risk Compensation)
Value of fine is way too less than the discomfort caused

Bandwagon Effect/ Social Norms (Social, cultural, environmental) Social Desirability Bias.

Cognitive embodiment

When the naughtiest child is made the monitor, he starts acting responsible. From this we inferred that when an individual feels responsible towards a certain group of people he is more likely to follow the rules. And this cognitive psychology influences their actions.

Cognitive Dissonance

There is a difference between what they do and what they know.

INSIGHT

1

There is a gap or an inconsistency between what they know and what they do i.e: between their beliefs and actions.

Cognitive dissonance

2

100/- challan is not seen as a big amount against the time and inconvenience .

Thus, the thing that value more i.e; time or convenient need to be also put on stake.

3

There is an illusion of control.

They feel that they have control on the circumstances and are less likely to have negative experience and they know their safety better.

4

There exists a distorted perception about the policeman amongst the youth.
They feel thrill and excitement in rebelling. There is also a sense of masculinity that the men/ young boys feel.

SOLUTION

1.

2.

Helmet for fine:

First challan: Warning.

Second: Buy a helmet as a fine.

This will add a sense of loss, liability and fear of collecting multiple helmets.

Special Mention:

Special mentions in the newspaper during the traffic week/ other special drives/ campaigns, every month.

Recognition as a powerful tool in retaining the compliant citizen as well as gaining more complaint citizen.

Use of Zebra Crossing

Key Observations

Most pedestrians take diagonal path to cross road at the junction.
People are unaware/ don’t know rules related to crossing road by pedestrian (about zebra crossing)
They are seen to be running while crossing the road.
They often feel ignored and vulnerable.
Vehicles tend to stop on zebra crossing, hence pedestrian are forced to jaywalk.
On asking they generally apologized and accepted that they are wrong.
When traffic opens/ merges they get confused and run/ haste/ panic.
Zebra crossing is behind road divider.
Some said that it has become a habit now, zebra crossing is not necessary.

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

Perceived workload

Takes shorter distance
False sense of urgency

Cognitive Dissonance

They know following of zebra crossing is a rule but still don’t follow it
They are aware it is for their safety still don’t follow it.
They believe since they are overly attentive therefore they can jaywalk

Normalcy bias

They don’t perceive not walking zebra crossing can be dangerous for their life

Bandwagon effect

People tend to follow others while crossing road

Risk compensation / Peltzman effect

Since perceived safety is more, they tend to take greater risks too like running

Reactance

They do opposite as they feel laws restricts them

Loss Aversion

Loss of time
Loss of energy

Solution

1.

Pedestrian Safe Zones

Identifying these “Pedestrian Safe Zones” on google maps and highlighting them for greater awareness.

This way pedestrians would feel included into system.

It will also act as a nudge for drivers to slow down as zebra crossing is ahead.

2.

Footprint as Nudge

Footprints painted on the zebra crossing to nudge and guide pedestrians to use the zebra crossing more

EXISTING

PROPOSED

IMPLIMENTATION

With the help of Ahmedabad Traffic Police department & Miunicipality this solution was implemented over a period of 2 days. An increase in rate of compliance was observed.

The design solution executed helped in increasing the compliance to a little extent. If the same design solution, is done in appropriate paint type, colour and properties, we expect a greater rate of compliance.

Team Members: Anshika Chaurasia | Aswathy Subhash | Anushtha Singh | Tanaya Lal | Tavleen Chohan

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