Car drivers dupe themselves into feeling safest at the wheel

Despite government statistics showing otherwise, car drivers feel safest behind the wheel than on other modes of transport – but admit to being terrified when a passenger, finds new research.

In a study compiled by Brake and Green Flag, drivers felt safer behind the wheel than as a passenger on a train, plane or ferry – despite actually being aware that these alternative modes of transport are much less likely to end in disaster than a car journey. 9 people die on roads every day in the UK. However most respondents ranked being a passenger in a car as one of the modes of transport that made them feel least safe.

More than 1,000 motorists across the UK were asked to rank six different modes of transport (driver in car, passenger in car, bus, train, plane, and ferry) in order according to how safe they made them feel.

Two thirds (66%) ranked driving a car among the top three modes of transport that made them feel safest, with more than half of these (more than 1 in 3 (38%) of total sample) saying driving made them feel the safest out of all modes listed.

By comparison, only one 1 in 6 motorists (16%) said they felt safest on a train and only 1 in 10 (10%) felt safest on a ferry. 1 in 4 (26%) felt safest in a plane.

Only 1 in 33 (3%) of respondents said they felt safest when a passenger in a car. Nearly two thirds of respondents (59%) ranked being a passenger in a car as one of the modes of transport that made them feel least safe.

Revealingly, the research also shows that motorists actually know road transport is more dangerous than travel by rail, air or sea, even though they feel safer on roads. When motorists are asked how safe different travel modes actually are, travelling by plane comes out top – with nearly half (43%) of respondents saying it is probably the safest form of transport, compared with only 19% of respondents who think travelling by car is safest.

Nigel Charlesworth, spokesperson for Green Flag Motoring Assistance said: “The perception of the dangers associated with motoring are clearly at odds with the facts and while many of us rely on car transport in our daily lives, there is an acute need to become a nation of safer drivers.”

Mary Williams OBE, chief executive of Brake, said: “Drivers clearly have a false sense of invulnerability when driving a car, which they actually know isn’t real. If people deceive themselves about the inherent dangers of driving this may explain incessant risk-taking on the road and the daily death toll. About 9 out of 10 crashes are due to driver error.”

She added: “Imagine a jet falling out of the sky over Britain every fortnight killing 130 people on board – there would be a national outcry and no-one would travel by plane. Yet despite the fact that this is the number of people killed on our roads every fortnight, we still feel safe in our cars and think it won’t happen to us and we won’t hurt anyone else by our actions. Every time we drive we should remember the 9 people who, on average, were killed on our roads yesterday and drive with extreme caution and humility today and tomorrow and beyond.”