Incidence and Risk of Fatal Vehicle Crashes Among Professional Drivers: A Population-Based Study in Taiwan

Fatal crashes and rare events logistic regression: an exploratory empirical study

Objective

Fatal road accidents are statistically rare, posing challenges for accurate estimation through the classic logit model (LM). This study seeks to validate the efficacy of a rare events logistic model (RELM) in enhancing the precision of fatal crash estimations.

Methods

Both LM and RELM were employed to examine the relationship between pertinent risk factors and the incidence of fatal crashes. Crash-injury datasets sourced from Hillsborough County, Florida served as the empirical basis for evaluating the performance metrics of both LM and RELM.

Results

The analysis revealed that RELM yielded more accurate predictions of fatal crashes compared to LM. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed, and the area under the curve (AUC) for each model was computed to offer a comparative performance assessment. The empirical evidence notably favored RELM over LM as substantiated by superior AUC values.

Conclusion

The study offers empirical validation that RELM is demonstrably more proficient in predicting fatal crashes than the LM, thereby recommending its application for nuanced traffic safety analytics.

The Personality and Resilience of Competitive Athletes as BMW Drivers—Data from India, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain

Background: Individual differences in personality and resilience are related to a variety of social behaviors. The current study sought to answer the question of whether BMW drivers exhibit different personality profiles and resilience levels compared with drivers of other car brands. Participants and procedure: An international study was carried out in India, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain on a sample of 448 athletes using the 20-item Mini-IPIP and the Resilience Scale. The results of BMW drivers (n = 91) were compared with the results of drivers of other German car brands (n = 357). Results: BMW drivers were characterized by higher neuroticism compared with drivers of other German car brands. They also showed higher resiliency, both in terms of total score and scores on the subscales of: personal coping competences and tolerance of negative emotions, tolerance of failures and perceiving life as a challenge, and optimistic attitude towards life and capacity for self-mobilization in difficult situations. The greatest difference was observed for the factor of tolerance of failures and perceiving life as a challenge. Using the Dwass-Steel-Critchlow-Fligner (DSCF) pairwise comparison test, gender differences between athletes (as BMW drivers and drivers of other German car brands, respectively) were discussed. Additionally, the results of the main logistic regression analyses emphasized that neuroticism represents a better predictor of BMW preference in the case of athletes (as drivers) than the scores obtained for resilience. Conclusions: BMW drivers differed from drivers of other German car brands only with regard to neuroticism. A higher level of neuroticism can affect mental health and the overall quality of life in athletes; aggression and distress management are essential. Athletes (as BMW drivers) also showed differences in resiliency levels. Understanding the mechanisms of behavior among BMW drivers is possible through considering their personality and individual differences.