Relation of
Owner’s Manual to Safety
S. David Leonard
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602 USA
e-mail:dleonard@egon.psy.uga.edu
SUMMARY
Two surveys were performed in which the respondents
were asked about their use of the owner’s manual accompanying their
personal vehicles. In the first
survey responses from 150 women and 78 men were tabulated. Ten per cent of the participants said
they read all of the manual, seven percent said they read none of it, and 62
percent said they read only for special topics. The most commonly mentioned topics were maintenance,
operations, equipment, and
repairs. Operations and equipment were similar
in that they typically involved use of accessories. Only two or the 228 respondents indicated looking for safety
infromation.
The second survey examined safety factors more
specifically. Sixteen men and
sixteen women respondents were asked if they knew about the presence of safety
information in the owner’s manual. Seventy-five percent said they did, but indicated they
got most of their information from other sources. Their responses to questions about safety matters indicated
relatively little knowledge.
Although the owner’s manual could be a good
source of safety information, it is not used that way currently.
INTRODUCTION
Safety in any area is dependent upon knowledge
about the hazards that may exist and the means of avoiding them. Automobile drivers often perform unsafe
acts. It is likely that some of
those acts result from ignorance of the existence of a hazard or lack of
knowledge about ameliorating the hazard or both.
Some of the problems involved with hazards
in automobiles are related to changes
that are made in the operations of the vehicles, e. g., the introduction of the
Automatic Braking System (ABS). Individuals may also fail to use safety devices
properly, either because of not knowing they can be used (booster seats,
perhaps) or how they should be used (e.g., infant seats). A possible source of information
can be the owner’s manual.
The surveys described here examined the extent to which owners’
manuals were used by a variety of respondents.
EXPERIMENT
1
A total of 178 respondents, 78 men and 150 women
from three different states included college students some of whom received
credit for research participation and attendees at an elementary school
carnival who received event tickets for participating.
Method.
The
survey included questions about the respondents driving background and what
type of vehicle they drove as well as general demographic data such as age and
sex. The questions of importance
for this survey were whether or not the individuals had received an
owner’s manual and what they typically read in it. Alternatives for the responses included
“All of it, Special topics, and Until one got tired.” For those who chose special topics, the
question of what topics was asked.
Results.
Because
no group differences were detected, the data from the different sources were
combined. It should be noted that
almost all respondents indicated they had received a manual with the car. Only eight individuals said they had
not done so. Those persons
generally had very old vehicles.
In comparing
respondents as a function of age, one statistically significant difference was
noted. Older respondents (>25
yrs) were more likely to say that they read all of the manual, X2 = 7.97, p
< .01. See Figure 1.
Selection of specific
topics was also similar among groups as displayed in Figure 2. The only reliable differences were that
older respondents tended not to describe the specific topic, and men were more
likely than women to say they would
look at maintenance topics.
Experiment 2
To examine the
awareness of safety information in the owner’s manual, a survey was
performed in which respondents were asked specifically whether or not they knew
of safety information in the owner’s manual.
Method. Respondents
from the University of Georgia who were participating for course credit
completed a short survey. There
were 16 men and 16 women in the sample.
The survey incuded demographic information and questions about what sort
of vehicles they drove as well as safety information and whether or not they
were aware of safety materials in the owner’s manual.
Results. Most
(75%) of the respondents indicated they knew there was information about safety
in the owner’s manual, but in response to the question of where they got
safety information the manual was ranked behind parents, driver training, and
the media.
The lack of use of
information that might be found in some owner’s manuals was evident in
the answers to questions about safety practices. Despite the recent publicity
about the tire failures on SUVs, drivers of SUVs were less likely to indicate
that low pressure was more likely to produce overheating than high pressure in
the tires. Comparison of SUV
drivers with all others produced X2 = 9.10, p
< .01.
The use of the
owner’s manual is perhaps best exemplified by the rankings given to
sources of information about changing the oil and about tuning the radio. The manual was mentioned as
relevant for oil changes by 18 respondents with an average ranking of
importance of 2.0, while it was mentioned by 25 respondents as a source of
information about the radio with a mean rank of 1.5.
Conclusions
Because of the many
changes in operations of autos and the impacts those changes have on safety, it
is important to encourage drivers to evaluate them and how they should modify
their behaviors to take them into account.
Although safety
information is available in the owner’s manual, relatively few
individuals find it there, primarily because they don’t look there. Given the sizes of most
owner’s manuals, perhaps a good technique would be to provide a separate
manual for safety. To
increase the probability of examining it,
it might also include topics of most concern to the average user, e.g.
how to tune the radio.
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Figure 1. Percent of Respondents Reading Portions of Manual
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Figure 2. Percent of respondents indicating they read manual for
items.