Retrospect and prospect of “Traffic Safety Education” in Kagawa Prefecture

The aim of this paper is to explain why we have conducted “Traffic Safety Education” in the Kagawa Prefecture during the past ten years so as to clarify the important factors for preventing painful traffic accidents in advance. To meet this aim, we firstly clarify the reason why we eventually decided to conduct “Traffic Safety Education” in the Kagawa Prefecture. In other words, the organization of powerful actors and/or leaders to cope with traffic accidents plays a very important role in “Traffic Safety Education.” Then, we specifically describe the essential parts of our “Traffic Safety Education”. In this respect, we have decided to select the following two aims: to reduce the number of traffic accidents, and to improve traffic manners, respectively. Thirdly, we evaluate various measures, such as teaching materials, teaching methods, and other activities of our “Traffic Safety Education” in detail. Lastly, we summarize the remaining tasks, which have been revealed so far, together with some concluding remarks.     

Clarifying multiple-mode decision making in conventional psychological models: A consideration of the influential mechanism of car use's characteristics on the behavioral use of public transportation

The existence of the multiple-mode decision making process challenges the existing psychological theories those predict travel behaviors because the theories were mainly to explain the relationship between travelers' perceived attributes of a targeted mode, not to make choices between modes. A review of related literatures showed a lack of focus on the mechanism of one mode influencing other mode in psychological models. The present study investigates how car-related factors affect the establishment of bus use intention in a psychological investigation. It is hypothesized that single car use factors do not directly influence bus use intention, rather than that; they indirectly influence bus use intention through an overall factor of car use. Results from a dataset of 270 samples investigating three types of daily trips in the Japanese context showed support to the mediating effect of the overall car use factor. As such, an arbitrary inclusion of car-related factors to psychological models of public transportation may not be recommended.