Road traffic injuries and deaths continue to be a serious worldwide
health issue especially in developing countries. Vietnam, a rapidly
developing country, has seen major shifts to industrialization and
urbanization. Car ownership remains low at around 1.3 vehicles per 100
households, whilst there are 96.1 motorbikes for every 100 households
(General Statistics Office, 2010). According to the Vietnamese Ministry
of Health (2011), around one million Vietnamese suffered some form of
road-related injury (or death) every year. This means around three
thousand road injuries (Ministry of Health, 2011) and around 36 deaths
every day (WHO, 2009). The statistics are possibly larger given that
road-related injuries are difficult to estimate because road fatalities are
defined by police as dying within 24 hours of a road accident (WHO,
2009). Thus, the scope of the problem is indefinably ‘large’ and affects
many people. Studies have indicated the contribution of drivers’
perceptual errors to road traffic incidents (Sabey & Taylor, 1980). The
errors may stem from misperceptions of environmental factors or the
ability of drivers and their vehicles (Brow & Groeger, 1988). The
literature about misperceptions and health related behaviours
demonstrated that misperceptions could lead to erroneous descriptive
norms that govern individuals’ attitude (Heine et al., 2005), which in turn
can influence their intention to produce actual behaviour, in this case
driving behaviour.