Characteristics of crashes and injuries among 14 and 15 year old drivers, by rurality

Handheld Cellphone Use and Risky Driving in Adolescents

Importance

Handheld cellphone use while driving is associated with increased motor vehicle crash risk among adolescents.

Objective

To examine the association of handheld cellphone use while driving with kinematic risky driving (KRD) events-hard braking and rapid acceleration-in adolescent drivers.

Design, Setting, Participants

Adolescents aged 16.50 to 17.99 years licensed 365 days or less in Pennsylvania were eligible to participate in this cross-sectional study. Enrollment occurred from July 29, 2021, to June 6, 2022. Participants downloaded a smartphone telematics cellphone app to record driving data for 60 days.

Exposures

Trip characteristics, including frequency, length, and duration; presence of speeding; frequency and duration of handheld cellphone use; time of day; and presence of precipitation.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Kinematic risky driving events per 100 miles driven. Zero-inflated Poisson regression models examined whether individual characteristics and trip characteristics were associated with KRD. Incidence rate ratios were computed.

Results

Of 405 adolescents who responded to recruitment, 151 enrolled, 140 completed study procedures, and 119 with 12 360 trips were included in the analytic sample (60 female participants [50.4%]; mean [SD] age, 17.2 [0.4] years). Adolescents drove a mean (SD) of 103.8 (65.7) trips, 565.0 (487.3) miles, and 25.1 (19.3) hours. Adolescents had minimal night trips (1.5% [192]), and few trips with precipitation present (9.0% [1097]). Speeding occurred in 43.9% (5428) of the trips and handheld cellphone use occurred in 34.1% (4214) of the trips. Kinematic risky driving events occurred in 10.9% (1358) of the trips at a rate of 2.65 per 100 miles. In adjusted models, increased KRD events were associated with handheld cellphone use (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 2.62; 95% CI, 1.53-4.48), speeding (IRR, 2.12; 95% CI, 1.06-4.26), and minutes driving (IRR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01-1.02). Trips at night, precipitation presence, licensure for less than 6 months, and sex were not associated with increased KRD events.

Conclusions

In this cross-sectional study of adolescent drivers, trips with handheld cellphone use and speeding were associated with higher rates of KRD, while individual characteristics were not. The findings suggest that smartphone telematics apps provide an opportunity to observe behaviors as well as surveil changes due to intervention efforts.

Working towards 2030 road safety targets, the need for specific rural and remote children strategies

INTRODUCTION

Despite the importance of child road traffic death, the knowledge about rural child road traffic death in Australia is limited.

OBJECTIVE

To explore the difference of child road traffic death between urban and rural areas.

DESIGN

This study was a retrospective analysis of road traffic death in Australia among children and adolescents aged 0-19 registered between 1 January 2009 and 30 June 2019.

RESULTS

During the study period, there were 1757 child road traffic death in Australia, and the crude mortality rate was 2.96 per 100 000 population. The crude mortality rate in remote (8.83 per 100 000 population) and very remote (11.08 per 100 000 population) areas was much higher than major cities (1.83 per 100 000 population), inner regional (5.14 per 100 000 population) and outer regional (5.91 per 100 000 population).

CONCLUSIONS

Specific targets are needed to address the burden of child road traffic death in Australia around rurality, as it is a significant risk factor of child road traffic death.

Rates and predictors of teen driver crash culpability

BACKGROUND

Motor-vehicle crash risk is highest among teen drivers. Despite a wealth of research on the topic, there are still many contributors to these crashes that are not well understood. The current study sought to examine the contribution of graduated driver licensing (GDL) restrictions, sex, age, roadway circumstances, and citation history to teen drivers' crash culpability.

METHOD

Crash system data from the Iowa Department of Transportation were linked with traffic-related charges from the Iowa Court Information System. Crashes involving teens aged 14 to 17 years between 2016 and 2019 were analyzed (N = 19,847). Culpability was determined using the driver contributing circumstances from the crash report. Moving and non-moving traffic citations issued prior to the date of each crash were considered. A multivariable logistic regression model was constructed to examine predictors of crash culpability.

RESULTS

Teen drivers were determined to be culpable for more than two thirds of crashes (N = 13,604, 68.54%). Culpability was more prevalent among males, younger teens, in rural areas, in the presence of reported roadway contributing circumstances, during hours of restricted nighttime driving, and among teens with citation histories that included both moving and non-moving citations. Similarly, multivariable model results indicated that the likelihood of culpability was higher among males, in rural areas, and at each stage of GDL compared to teen drivers with unrestricted licenses. While drivers with a history of both moving and non-moving violations were more likely to be culpable, those with a history of only moving or only non-moving violations were less likely to be culpable compared to those with no violation history.

CONCLUSION

Sex, crash location, and GDL stage were associated with teen driver crash culpability. A singular prior moving or non-moving violation may play a protective role in teen crash culpability.

How do driving behavior and attitudes toward road safety vary between developed and developing countries? Evidence from Iran and the Netherlands

INTRODUCTION

The rates of road traffic injuries and fatalities in developing countries are significantly higher than in developed countries. This study examines the differences in driving behavior, road safety attitudes, and driving habits between a developed country (the Netherlands) and a developing country (Iran), which bear major differences in terms of crash involvement per population.

METHOD

In this context, this study assesses the statistical association of crash involvement with errors, lapses, aggressive driving incidents, and non-compliance with traffic rules, attitudes, and habits. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate data obtained from 1,440 questionnaires (720 samples for each group).

RESULTS

The results revealed that more insecure attitudes toward traffic-regulation observance, negative driving habits, and risky behaviors, such as traffic rule violations act as influential factors of crash involvement. Iranian participants showed a greater likelihood to get involved in violations and driving habits with a higher level of risk. In addition, lower levels of safety attitudes toward traffic-regulation observance were observed. On the other hand, Dutch drivers were more likely to report lapses and errors. Dutch drivers also reported safer behavior in terms of unwillingness to engage in risky behaviors such as violations (speeding and no-overtaking). The structural equation models for crash involvement based on behaviors, attitudes, and driving habits were also evaluated for their accuracy and statistical fit using relevant indicators.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Finally, the findings of the present study point out the need for extensive research in some areas to foster policies that can effectively enhance safer driving.

An exploration of the role of driving experience on self-reported and real-world aberrant driving behaviors

A significant proportion of global road crashes are attributed to unsafe driving behaviors. The current study aimed to explore potential differences in driving behaviors across experienced and novice drivers using two separate approaches; a questionnaire study and an instrumented vehicle study (IVS). The analysis of 260 questionnaires and 1,372 traffic interactions within the IVS revelated that driving experience affects driving performance for different driving tasks. Factor analysis of the questionnaire data revealed the impact of driving errors, lapses, violations, and aggressive violations on the behavior of novice and experienced drivers. Behavioral models of novice and experienced drivers encountering other road users were determined using binary logistic regression. The results showed that novice drivers were more likely to engage in driving violations while experienced drivers were more likely to engage in aggressive violations. Unauthorized speeding, zigzag movements, using a mobile phone while driving, and unauthorized overtaking on roads were the most frequent driving violations by novice drivers. The most frequent aggressive violations by experienced drivers were tempting other drivers to create a race and chasing other drivers. These findings may be used as a framework to facilitate safer driving behaviors by reducing errors, lapses, violations and aggressive violations, and facilitating safety-promoting attitudes.

Capturing long-memory properties in road fatality rate series by an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average model with generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity: A case study of Florida, the United States, 1975-2018

INTRODUCTION

Time series models play an important role in monitoring and understanding the serial dynamics of road crash exposures, risks, outcomes, and safety performance indicators. The time-series methods applied in previous studies on crash time series analysis assume that the serial dependency decays rapidly or even exponentially. However, this assumption is violated in most cases because of the existence of long-memory properties in the crash time series data. Ignoring the long-memory dependency could result in biased understanding of the dynamics of road traffic crashes.

METHOD

To fill this research gap, this study proposes an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average model with generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARFIMA-GARCH) to capture and accommodate the long-memory decencies in the road fatality rate time series. To further investigate how the factors influencing the fatality risks play a role in the long-memory dependence, the effects of exogenous variables are examined in this study. The analysis is conducted based on the road crash fatality data in Florida, USA over 44 years. Results' Conclusions: The case analysis confirmed the existence of long-memory property in the crash fatality time series data by both the joint tests of Augmented Dickey-Fuller and the Phillips-Perron, and the integer order of differencing (≤0.5) in the proposed models. The model results reveal that gasoline price and alcohol consumption per capita is positively associated with road fatality risks, whereas unemployment rate and rural/urban road mileage are negatively related to the road fatality risks.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

The significant influential factors are also found to account for the long-memory serial correlations between road traffic fatalities to some extent.

Crash involvement among unlicensed 17 year old drivers before and after licensing at 17 was allowed

Unlicensed driving among youth is associated with increased crash risk, and partly motivated by a wish to learn to drive. In this paper we examine whether crash involvement among 17-year-old unlicensed drivers changed after post-licence accompanied driving from the age of 17 was allowed in Denmark in 2017. The study includes police-registered crashes occurring three years before and three years after the change (2014-2019). Results show an increase in crash involvement among 17-year-olds and a small increase in crash involvement among unlicensed 17-year-olds, if population size is taken into account, but no differences in the crash and person characteristics before and after the change. Being male, speeding, and impairment at the time of the crash predicted unlicensed crash involvement. A latent class clustering analysis (LCCA) identified seven clusters of crashes involving an unlicensed 17-year-old. The cluster characteristics reveal different patterns in the associated factors such as females and parked vehicles being more likely to be included in C1, alcohol impaired in C2 and drug impaired in C7. Brief crash descriptions provided by the police indicate that driving with extra motives such as showing-off or pleasure are prevalent in all clusters. Results confirm, that unlicensed crash involvement among 17-year olds is associated with risk-taking behaviours such as speeding, impaired driving, showing-off, and the car being pursued by the police. However, unfortunate manoeuvres and loss of control of the vehicle possibly related to poor driving skills are also associated with the crashes. Crash characteristics such as impairment by alcohol and drugs indicate that unlicensed crash involvement is a distinct safety challenge associated with health risk behaviours rather than a transport related need for a driver's license. Additional studies exploring the motivations and circumstances associated with unlicensed driving among 17-year olds are needed along with measures to prevent car access among unlicensed youth..