Česká verze

Questionnaire evaluation

We succeeded in obtaining the answers from 185 respondents. We approached the parents of our schoolmates at class meetings. This year, our school has only 225 students. Some parents did not attend the meetings and others have no car - we therefore obtained only about a hundred answers. We then started canvassing among our teachers, neighbours and acquaintances around where we live. We know that the number of answers is not large enough to enable us to draw far-reaching conclusions. Still, it reflects to a certain extent the current situation in the car traffic in Prague, and points to certain attitudes of the city inhabitants.

  1. 29 % of cars are older than 10 years, out of this 9 % are older than 15 years. This proportion is still somewhat higher outside Prague. Many people cannot afford to buy a new car and therefore try to keep their car as long as possible. Young people often buy cheap second-hand cars.
  2. Nearly half the people cover less than 10 000 km per year – we see this as a rather positive phenomenon. Car driving is relatively expensive thanks to high fuel prices.
  3. 73 % of car owners from the group of our respondents very rarely or never drive into the centre of Prague. Despite this, the number of cars in the city centre is very high, there are traffic jams and finding a parking place is difficult.
  4. 77 % people think that the air at places with high traffic intensity is very bad, only 2 % respondents are satisfied with air quality.
  5. Less than half of the cars have catalytic converters of exhaust gases. This is not a satisfactory state of affairs, but it corresponds to the vehicle fleet composition.
  6. Nearly half of the people who drive daily to the city centre are willing to switch over to public transport. The 16 % of respondents who are not at all willing to give up personal transport in the city centre probably need the cars for their jobs.
  7. We were surprised to learn that only 24 % drivers had a positive attitude towards catalytic converters. This may be due to the fact that people do not know much about the converters and do not trust in their efficiency. Owners of cars with carburettors may think that installing an expensive catalytic converter in their car would be hardly sensible. 30 % of respondents were in favour of administrative curbing of personal transport. These measures are problematic and have not been successful in any country world-wide. However, stopping or strongly reducing personal car traffic in smog periods is highly sensible. Most people were in favour of building roads. The city of Prague has not yet completed building its external traffic belt and its construction proceeds very slowly.
  8. 26 % people maintain that the public knowledge of the harmful emissions is not satisfactory, while 37 % do not want to learn anything more about them. Environmental education has in the last years been spreading in schools but many adults do not want to become acquainted with environmental problems and have no feeling of immediate threat. We think that media, especially the television, should pay more attention to these problems. Through our project, and especially its presentation, we also should contribute to a better awareness of these problems in the wide public.
  9. Here all the answers were quite clear – all people think that the fuel composition affects the composition of the emissions.
  10. Only one respondent failed to see any connection between cars and chemical industry. 91% of people are aware that no cars would be produced, and of course could not move, without chemical industry.
  11. We are aware of the fact that this question is speculative. We wanted to find out how people trust chemists. Many people who do not know much about chemistry take chemistry to be something frightening, harmful, incomprehensible. This, however, does not prevent them from using chemical industry products from morning to night, among others also car fuels.

Only very few people believe that personal transport will disappear. Interestingly, relatively many people trust in electromobiles. The current car development, however, is still based and will, in the next one or two decades, be based on fossil fuels and, to a small extent, on fuels from renewable resources. The demand for fuels is expected to rise steadily.
It is difficult to say what will be fifty years from now. For the time being, the mankind behaves as if the fossil fuel resources were inexhaustible.

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