Research Notes-Fall 1999
Child Pedestrian Collisions Related to Driver History Factors
By Paul Choate
In December 1997 the UCLA School of Public Health Southern California Injury Prevention Center published an article studying the relationship between driver records and child pedestrian collisions using driver license history information supplied by the DMV Research and Development Branch.
Relationship between driverís record and automobile versus child pedestrian collisions (Lightstone et al., Injury Prevention, December 1997) used the statistical method logistic regression to compute the increased likelihood of drivers who had auto pedestrian accidents involving children under the age of 15 of also having a poor driving record as measured by traffic citations, safety violations (e.g., broken tail light) and negligent operator points. Driving records were compared with those from a randomly chosen group of drivers who did not have similar accidents.
The study demonstrated that, as the numbers of these negative driving history factors increased, so did the possibility of collisions with children. The highest counts of traffic citations, safety violations and negligent operator points were found more likely to belong to drivers in the collision group than the control.
Findings showed that the collision group was 13 times more likely to have more than four traffic citations, nearly eight times more likely to have over three prior safety violations, and five times more likely to have over two negligent operator points compared to the control group.
Increased Chance of
Driver History Factors as Predicted by
Membership in Child Pedestrian Collision Group
| Drivers with child-collisions were*. . . | to have. . . |
| 13.08 times more likely | over 4 prior citations | |
| 7.7 times more likely | over 3 prior safety violations | |
| 5.1 times more likely | over 2 negligent operator points |
The authors suggested several ideas to help reduce the risk to children created by this population of drivers. Their ideas included increasing citations from police at the scene of accidents, increasing penalties from the justice system, impounding vehicles of unlicensed drivers and raising public awareness regarding hit-and-run incidents.
To order a copy of the report An Evaluation of the Impact of Californiaís Driving Performance Evaluation Road Test on Traffic Accident and Citation Rates (Report No. 181) write to DMV, Research and Development Branch at 2415 1st Avenue, Mail Station F-126, Sacramento, CA 95818.