A STUDY OF THE TIME BETWEEN PREVIOUS TRAFFIC INFRACTIONS AND FATAL AUTOMOBILE CRASHES, 1984-1986

Abstract Automobile drivers who have a history of traffic infractions may be at increased risk of being involved in a fatal automobile crash. To develop effective intervention strategies, it is important to understand the time that elapses between these events. To investigate the recurrent time, the time between previous traffic infractions and involvement in a fatal automobile crash, we analyzed data from the Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS) for the three-year period, 1984–1986. We used mathematical modeling techniques to avoid the length-biased sampling problems inherent in data that depend on outcome events occurring during a specific calendar time interval. Our results suggest that the mean time between a previous traffic infraction and a fatal automobile crash was the shortest for individuals aged 16 to 25 years, who had a mean recurrent time of 14.2 months with a 90% confidence interval of 13.9 months to 14.6 months. Approximately 97% of the recurrent times occurred within 60 months of a given traffic infraction, with the highest risk of a fatal crash from 3 to 7 months following the infraction.

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