On the level of safety knowledge in the general public

Following the implementation of international and national regulations and standards pertaining the control of risks in different industrial and civil domains, a general increase of the safety knowledge was noticed and recognized in literature (e.g. Lee & Harrison, 2000). Indeed, different campaigns to rise the awareness of the general public were developed and implemented. However, even if numerous studies and researches measured the safety culture in occupational domains (Choudhry et al., 2007), a measurement of the safety culture in the civil society is far to be defined. The present paper shows an attempt of measuring the public safety knowledge: a simple methodology based on gaming (safety quiz related to darts playing) was developed to collect data on the safety knowledge in the population, both for children and for adults. Different sets of questions were established for children (aged from 4 to 15) and adults. The quiz was proposed during the European Researchers’ Night in 2015, 2016 in Turin (Italy), collecting about 250 replies. The present paper presents the analysis of the data collected, together with some observations both on the diffusion of the safety culture in the general public and on the possible improvement of the data collection approach.