A Spatial Analysis of Driving Behavior in Isfahan City

After industrial revolution, driving vehicles became a necessity in fulfilling human needs in different aspects of life. This is a positive phenomenon but is not without negative side effects, such as, for example, accidents, air pollution, traffic jam etc. In many countries, road construction and maintenance is far behind innovations of new vehicles. In many places the road quality or size is not able to bare the traffic load, hence the reason for significant rise in accidents and human life loss in the second half of the twentieth century in developed and developing countries. That is, 1.2 million deaths worldwide are caused by vehicle accidents. Accidents are the first cause of injuries and second cause of death in the population of Iran at ages bellow 40. In vehicle accidents, three factors are involved: human, vehicle and road quality. The human factor is more apparent since it governs the other two. Since the human factor is influenced by social, economic, cultural, political and other environmental aspects, its behavior in driving varies with respect to space and time. Consequently the question addressed in this paper is as follow: is there a correlation between where does the driver live and how his driving behavior is? And how is the driver’s spatial distribution manner when it comes to improper driving behavior on the intra-city routs? The megacity of Isfahan as a touristic city is of concern in this respect. Thus the broader questions are: which are the factors involved in affecting the driving behavior of drivers in Isfahan? What are the patterns which influence driving behaviors and what are the effective factors involved in developing these behaviors? For this purpose, the drivers’ behavior of different sections of the city are evaluated based on different variables and the local roads. Finally, the worst exposed driving behaviors of domestic drivers on domestic roads are identified. This is a practical study of a descriptive-analytic nature. The data is compiled based on library source and field survey. In the field survey the tool used is a researcher designed questionnaire containing two series of open and closed questions. The questionnaire consists of the two following measuring parts:A.General characteristics that include variables such as sex, age, driving license issuance date, hours driven per day, education, income, occupational status, residential sectionB.Driving behavior that includes variables such as conduct on local roads which contain 9 items measured by Likert scale. Sample size is estimated through Cochran formula, by which 322 drivers were randomly selected from the intra-city drivers in the vicinity of major connecting intersections like squares, circles, crosses. They were asked to stop when at a very low speed or almost unmoving. Data analysis, summarizing and categorization are processed through SPSS. The descriptive findings are illustrated through GIS Arc software, and Kruskal-Wallis test, Tavy - Kendall none and chi-square were run to analyze the data.Discussion of Results & The findings indicate that be getting older drivers tend to observe traffic roles in the following ways: 1.Observing the standard distance from the vehicle in front 2.Observing the proper speed when the traffic is high3.Driving between the lines4.Not overtaking from right5.Allowing others to overtake6.Patience during driving7.Having proper speed when overtaking8.Watching the side mirrors and proper signaling before turningThere is no statistical significance between driver age and parking at "No Parking" zones. As the driving skills are advanced all the above variables are improved. However, there is no statistical significance between the skill record and parking at No Parking zones.As the duration of driving per day increases, parking in No parking zones, overtaking from right and impatience among the drivers increases too. There is no statistical significance between the duration of driving per day and variables 1, 2,3,5,7, and 8.There is a direct relationship between the educational level and allowing others to take over. There is no statistical significance between educational level and the rest of the variables. No statistical significance is found between the drivers’ income and driving behavior. Type of profession with respect to prevailing socio-cultural status influences driving quality behavior.Men behave differently according to their residential neighborhood as far as the 8 variables are concerned.The same is true for women except in variables 1 and 8. Not sufficient parking space, heavy traffic in the old textures of the city, malls, wholesale centers, narrow streets, congested streets with pedestrians influence driver behavior.This problem becomes more complicated when the non-domestic drivers drive in the city. In general, on the city routs like city entrance roads, educational centers, commercial centers, tourist attraction centers, recreational centers and neighborhoods with weaker structures which have to have such traffic congestions the worst kind of driving behavior is expected.