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An Exploratory Study of Vehicle Type in Alcohol-Related Crashes

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Human Behavior and Traffic Safety

Abstract

This report describes an exploratory statistical analysis of two large national traffic accident databases (NASS and FARS) to determine whether certain car types are at higher risk of being driven by crash-involved drinking drivers. A primary objective of the research was to provide a new perspective with which to identify and study the types of persons who tend to crash while driving after drinking.

To compare frequencies of drinking drivers for crash-involved vehicles, a relative risk statistic was computed for each vehicle type. Given that a particular type of vehicle was crash-involved, this measure estimated the risk of its being driven by an individual who had consumed alcohol, relative to the risk for other vehicle types. It also corrected for differences in exposure to risk under certain assumptions which are discussed in the body of the report.

These relative risk statistics were first plotted to identify, by visual inspection, those crash-involved vehicle types that were at comparatively high and low risk of being driven by individuals who had consumed alcohol. In addition, the data were submitted to a cluster analysis program which grouped various vehicles together in this “drinking driver accident space.” These clusters were given descriptive names and their possible interpretation is discussed at length.

In summary, the results showed that drinking drivers are probably significantly overrepresented in certain types of crash-involved vehicles while they are underrepresented in other vehicle types. Several hypotheses about the nature of these differences are set forth. The report concludes with a discussion of the current state of accident modeling and a list of specific recommendations for further theoretical and empirical work. It is clear that further research is essential to achieve a more definitive understanding of the drinking driver problem—and to evaluate possible countermeasures before implementing them.

This paper represents the authors’ initial effort to provide a new perspective with which to identify and study the drinking driver problem. The suggestions and hypotheses contained in this paper are the authors’ own and are subject to substantial additional research.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, Michigan, USA

    Linda S. Angell & Calvin S. von Buseck

Authors
  1. Linda S. Angell
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  2. Calvin S. von Buseck
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, Michigan, USA

    Leonard Evans  & Richard C. Schwing  & 

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© 1985 Plenum Press, New York

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Angell, L.S., von Buseck, C.S. (1985). An Exploratory Study of Vehicle Type in Alcohol-Related Crashes. In: Evans, L., Schwing, R.C. (eds) Human Behavior and Traffic Safety. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2173-6_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2173-6_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9280-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-2173-6

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