Luis Montoro, Professor of Road Safety at the University of Valencia, gave the first talk in the series

Values and emotions such as haste, showing off and aggressiveness have a direct influence on mobility habits and are a direct cause of road accidents. For Luis Montoro, Professor of Road Safety at the University of Valencia, “the human factor is involved in between 70 and 90% of traffic accidents”, well above environmental factors, which are involved in 15 to 35%, or directly vehicle-related causes, which account for 4 to 10%. These figures were revealed yesterday during the first day of the series of talks entitled Responsible mobility. Values on the move, promoted by the abertis foundation with the collaboration of iberpistas.

The goal of these talks is to analyse, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the importance of the human factor as a decisive element in accident prevention and encouraging road safety. Today, traffic accidents are still “the leading cause of violent deaths in our country”, according to Jordi Jané, Vice-President of the Congress of Deputies and Spokesperson of its Road Safety and Traffic Accident Prevention Working Party. Both Jordi Jané and Highways Director General Francisco Javier Criado, gave their support to the abertis foundation initiative and “its honest, rigorous history” in promoting debate on road safety and the importance of human behaviour.

abertis foundation Chairman Miquel Roca noted that this series of talks forms part of the Foundation’s Road Safety Programme, and highlighted how 101,269 children aged between 8 and 12 have taken part in road education classes in schools, one of the Programme’s four lines of action, together with the promotion of research into mobility, the organisation of events such as the current series of talks and promotional activities by means of the production of books and other informational material.

The importance of the human factor

The first talk, Transmitting values for secure mobility, was given by Luis Montoro, who is also Director of the University of Valencia’s University Traffic and Road Safety Institute and President of the Spanish Foundation for Road Safety (FESVIAL). For Montoro, traffic accident-related “human error” can be broken down into two types: errors preceding the accident, such as those of recognition and identification; direct factors, physical causes, such as fatigue or sensorial defects; psychological causes, such as failure to pay attention or aggressiveness; the use of substances such as alcohol and drugs; distracting conduct such as using the mobile phone or smoking and factors that inhibit prudence. Nevertheless, for Professor Montoro, it is individual values that are key to road safety.

For Montoro, “very few accidents are caused by poorly-executed manoeuvres. We now know that the vast majority of accidents are caused by poor decision-making, in which a person’s values –together with other psychosocial variables– play a key role”. He noted that “an individual’s or society’s value system has a decisive influence on respect for rules and the conduct we eventually have, including (logically) those related to traffic. The serious defects in the way we transmit values and mores to the young are the cause of many accidents”.

Luis Montoro stressed the importance of the family in the transmission of the right values and respect for the rules to ensure responsible drivers. He also underlined the importance of transmitting values and not only “an understanding of traffic signs and rules”, as is currently the case with road safety and driving education.

The influence of advertising, the media and video games were also other factors analysed by this Professor of Road Safety as factors sometimes responsible for transmitting contradictions regarding the values inherent in responsible road safety and driving education.

Upcoming events in the series

Following yesterday’s talk, the series continues at CaixaForum Madrid the next two Mondays. Philosopher and essayist José Antonio Marina will give the talk to be held on 2 June. Winner of Spanish National Essay Prize and the DMR Economics Prize, José Antonio Marina is the most influential philosopher in the field of management and one of Spain’s most widely-read thinkers. He has developed a theory on intelligence and made important contributions to political organisations and structures. He is the author of Teoría de la Inteligencia Creadora (The Theory of Creative Intelligence) and La inteligencia fracasada (Failed Intelligence).

Ricardo Blasco, a social psychologist at the University of Barcelona, will be giving the closing talk in the series on 9 June. Blasco combines his lecturing role with research into different aspects of driving and road safety. His doctoral thesis was entitled Azar y factor humano en los accidentes de tráfico (Chance and the Human Factor in Traffic Accidents).

The abertis foundation

The abertis foundation encourages and promotes study on the repercussion of large-scale infrastructure on the territory, particularly on demographics, the economy and the environment. As one of the CSR responses of abertis, the mobility and telecommunications infrastructure management leader, the Foundation also carries out a wide-ranging Road Safety Programme.

Iberpistas

iberpistas is the abertis group concessionaire that operates the AP-6 Villalba-Adanero (69.6 km) motorway and, via its subsidiary castellana, the AP-51 Villacastín-Avila (23.1 km) and AP-61 San Rafael-Segovia (27.7 km) motorways.

Ámbito María Corral

Ámbito María Corral de Investigación y Difusión is a public service association, whose goal is research into and the dissemination of human values through different interdisciplinary training activities, as well as other awareness-raising actions aimed at different sectors of society.