Citation

Bents FD, Hedlund JH. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1978; 22(1): 293-299.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1978, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In 1971 and 1972 the Pennsylvania State Police collected special data on 15,415 automobile accidents in rural Pennsylvania. The data collected included both items routinely obtained by the police and supplemental items selected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Culpability for each accident was determined by the state police.

The data were analyzed to investigate the predictive ability of the following driver characteristics on culpability: age, sex, route familiarity, driving experience, and experience or familiarity with the accident vehicle. Iterative fitting methods of multivariate contingency table analysis were used to fit log- linear structural models to the data, to test the fit of these models, and to compare the predictive effect of these variables and their interactions. The results indicate that route familiarity is the strongest predictor, followed by age and driving experience. Driver sex and experience with the accident vehicle have only minimal predictive power. No interactions were significant: the route familiarity, age, and driving experience enter independently into the final model.

The findings suggest that drivers unfamiliar with their route may be more vulnerable to inadequate controls, poor highway design, information overload or other distractions at the time of the crash.


Keywords: Driver distraction;