Gayle Sticher has found that rural drivers
are resistant to road safety messages that
work in the city.

Despite having more fatal road crashes than city dwellers, rural Queenslanders are resistant to road safety messages, partly because safety campaigns do not address the rural culture and identity, a QUT road safety psychologist has found.

Queensland University of Technology PhD student Gayle Sticher, from the Centre for Accident research and Road Safety - Queensland (CARRS-Q), said that even though rural Australians made up one third of the population, more than 50 per cent of road deaths occurred in rural areas.

"Rural drivers seem to be resistant to the road safety messages that 'work' in the city," Ms Sticher said.

"This is partly because road safety campaigns show urban-based interventions and deal with driving situations, such as traffic lights and stop signs, which aren't common in the country."

In a study sponsored by NRMA Insurance, Ms Sticher studied psychological barriers to the acceptance of road safety programs in rural Far North Queensland.

"I found that a belief in 'myths' about road safety contributed to rural drivers' misperception of risk on the roads, and to their resistance to messages about safe driving," she said.

"Rural drivers maintained these beliefs even after they had been in a crash.

"For example, even though 70 per cent of crashes involved a single vehicle, FNQ road users believed that road crashes are primarily caused by other people, particularly town or city drivers.

"They also believe that adverse road conditions or the weather are to primarily blame for car crashes, and that it is safer to drive in the country than the city."

Ms Sticher said an "optimism bias" or the belief that your driving was better than other people's and, as a consequence, nothing was going to happen to you on the road, was a strong theme in people's thoughts on rural driving.

In an attempt to find ways to present road safety messages on the "fatal four" - speeding, fatigue, drink driving and failure to wear a seatbelt - to rural drivers, Ms Sticher made a road safety DVD, featuring "bush tucker man" Les Hiddins.

She showed the DVD to people in hospital recovering from a road crash to study "teachable moments" or the times when people were more receptive to road safety message.

"Although road crash patients were very co-operative and interested in the DVD, there was not a great deal of change in their risk perception or optimism bias after viewing the DVD," Ms Sticher said.

"After a crash, an injured person has a lot of other things going on, so this may not be the ideal time to tackle their road safety beliefs and behaviours."