The differing perspectives of road users and service providers

A survey of almost 3000 people gathered evidence on people’s experiences of problems on Britain’s roads, their level of support for potential solutions, and on the different perspectives of transport professionals. An assessment was made of the steps required to reduce gaps between users’ expectations and their current experience. Questions raised by the findings include: the likelihood that current policy priorities are influenced by inaccurate assumptions about what the public would find acceptable; the potentially misleading impressions created by vicarious opinions; the need to re-weight survey responses to correct for differential response rates; and the role of public opinion, media pressure and professional judgement in the political decision-making process.