Road sharing - does it matter what road users think of each other?

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27Road sharing - does it matter what road users think of each other?Changing moral models could be a powerful tool for those seeking broaderchanges in patterns of road use. In this case, however, the tricky question maybe establishing whose moral model needs to change.Research implicationsTo identify opportunities to change behaviour by changing moral models, weneed evidence of the behavioural consequences of different moral models.At the simplest level, this means investigating the connections between havinga moral model and particular behaviours – such as driving aggressively, orchoosing to travel by bicycle. Note that, as well as establishing correlations, itwould also be important to investigate the direction of any causal relationship.As the examples above make clear, however, there would also be valuein investigating the consequences of behaviours which are themselvesconsequences of moral models: for instance, does the aggressive behaviourdeter others from choosing to travel by bicycle?4.2Understanding the ‘customer’What road users wantBehaviour-change approaches conceptualise roads as the site of policyrelevantbehaviour. But roads are also a service, provided for road users andpaid for by them through various forms of taxation. From this service-provisionstandpoint, knowing what road users want is an end in itself.The traditional consultation approach – sending people plans and askingwhether they would prefer a speed hump or a bollard – expects ordinarycitizens to make expert judgements about the potential impact of various typesof infrastructure or intervention on the thing they are more likely to care about:the success of their everyday interactions with the road system, and withother road users. It seems to us that people are neither equipped nor (often)motivated to respond to questions such as these.So why not ask about the thing people care about instead?Moral models provide a framework for asking people questions that mightactually make sense to them. Rather than asking what a road should look like,we should ask how people should interact on it – who should and shouldn’t bewhere, what they should and shouldn’t be doing. Consultation approaches thatfocus on these topics are, essentially, researching people’s moral models.Of course, the experts would still be left with the challenge of developingsolutions that would deliver what people wanted. In this they might fail. But atleast they would then be criticised for failing to get the solution right – and notfor failing to listen to what people want in the first place.
Why study moral models?28Acceptance of interventionsAs noted in Section 4.1, authorities – and the individual policy-makers andpractitioners that work in them – have their own more or less explicit andcoherent moral models, articulated to road users by the phasing of lights,the lay-out of the street, the priorities of traffic police, the semiotics ofcommunications, and in countless other ways.Understanding the different moral models of road users gives all of us, asindividuals working with our own moral models, a way of seeing the roadsfrom other perspectives, and anticipating things that to us seem obvious butto others prove objectionable.Research implicationsAs part of the process of understanding what road users want and will accept,we need a better understanding of the different moral models that exist andwho holds them.This means identifying key dimensions which can be used to distinguishbetween moral models, and investigating how differences along thesedimensions correlate with other key differences (such as age or primary modeof transport).In the longer term, it could mean developing a segmentation based on thesedimensions and differences.4.3Understanding the evolving culture of road useOne reason why undesirable behaviour on the road might matteris that some of it may prove, almost literally, ‘infectious’.Consider, for example, recent experiments by Keizer inthe Netherlands (Keizer et al., 2008). In one experiment,passers-by were tempted with a 5 note protruding froman envelope which was itself sticking out of a letterbox.Twice as many passers-by stole the money if the mailboxwas daubed with graffiti or surrounded with litter. Similareffects were observed when the researchers left shoppingtrolleys around or padlocked cycles to railings illegally, withpeople more likely to do things like litter or take an illegalshort-cut. Cialdini’s work (2003) on descriptive norms is alsorelevant here: the basic argument is that if people perceive thatan undesirable behaviour (e.g. littering) is nonetheless common,people are more likely to do it.
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Road sharing - does it matter what road users think of each other?

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