Yogyakarta is well known as a student city. By means, many young people all over

Indonesia are studying in Yogyakarta. Thus, the population in Yogyakarta will

increase rapidly along with the increase of vehicles. As one of the consequences of

this increasement is road users will face a higher risk of traffic accident. It is because

road users spend more time in traffic and human error always happens when traffic

on the road such as road users often do not have a good knowledge of parts of the

traffic such as traffic signs. Therefore, by understanding traffic signs are required

toward achieving the traffic safety. The purpose of this study examines to what

extent the understanding of traffic signs by road users in Yogyakarta with respect

to their personal characteristics such as gender, college, semester, origin, license,

and study experience, and correlation with traffic accident. Then identify to what

extent the road users are obeying the traffic signs.

The data that used in this study are collected by using a questionnaire. Total 204

questionnaires are distributed and spread to college students in Yogyakarta as the

target respondents within ± 6 weeks for time duration for distributing and collecting

the questionnaires. Pearson correlation product moment is used to test the validity

of the questionnaire and Cronbach’s Alpha is used to test the reliability of the

questionnaire. Later, a descriptive analysis performed in percentage is used to

examine the understanding of traffic signs by road users in Yogyakarta and

correlation with traffic accident, also the road user behavior in obeying the traffic

signs.

The result of this study shows that only 12% respondents understanding the correct

types of all traffic signs, followed with understanding the traffic signs along

observation location, the result indicates that the level understanding of traffic signs

is in between good to very good understanding. From the study, there is no

significant difference understanding in gender, origin, driver license ownership of

respondents. While in respondent’s semester, the 1st, 3rd, and 5th semester of

respondents is the better understanding than respondents in 7th, 9th, 11th semester.

Study experience of traffic signs is influential because the respondents who had

studied the traffic signs have better understanding than respondents who never

studied traffic signs. From the total of respondents only 4% of respondents are never

violate the traffic signs. The result indicates that from the total respondents there

are 14 respondents had traffic accident due to do not understand traffic signs.