Citation

DeYoung DJ. J. Saf. Res. 2000; 31(2): 51-59.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, U.S. National Safety Council, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study used interrupted time series analysis to evaluate whether implementing a law in California allowing peace officers to impound/forfeit vehicles operated by drivers with suspended/revoked driver licenses was associated with changes in the crash rates among such drivers. The effects of the impoundment/forfeiture laws on crashes for suspended/revoked drivers were examined using crashes among validly licensed drivers as a control. While statistically significant intervention effects were found for suspended/revoked drivers, significant effects were also discovered for validly licensed drivers. Models examining crashes for suspended/revoked drivers that statistically controlled the effects of crashes for validly licensed drivers found only borderline statistically significant results. Thus, this study found no evidence that simply threatening to impound/forfeit the vehicles of suspended/revoked drivers affected their crash rates. This contrasts to a previous study, which showed that actually impounding the vehicles of such drivers substantially lowered their rates of subsequent crashes and traffic convictions.