Crash Reduction Factors for Education and Enforcement

Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) has a goal of reducing total crashes by 10% by 2015. Driver education, licensing, testing, and enforcement strategies are all tools that can be used to help reduce the incidence of accidents, particularly among teenage drivers, who are involved in accidents well out of proportion to their numbers in the overall driver population. In order to determine which strategies are likely to provide the best results, ODOT needs to have some quantitative estimate of the effectiveness of each strategy in terms of the amount of reduction it provides, in other words a crash reduction factor (CRF). A comprehensive literature and web search was conducted to determine driver education, licensing and enforcement practices, and CRF values used by other states and countries. An electronic survey of all states was conducted to get information about driver education, licensing programs, testing and enforcement measures, the state of the art in traffic safety practices, and CRFs. The relatively few CRFs obtained for driver education, licensing programs, and traffic enforcement measures were compared to those obtained for traffic engineering measures. Based on the analysis of all the information obtained only a limited number of quantitative CRFs exist for any of the driver education, licensing and enforcement measures in any of the states in the US. Published studies where the effects on reducing crashes for new measures with sound statistical evaluations using proper control groups appear to be almost non-existent in the US. CRFs for driver education, licensing programs, and enforcement measures based on the estimates by traffic safety experts were found for Switzerland in the VESIPO report and the cost/benefit ratios for some selected Swiss measures were found. It has to be noted that even the Swiss CRFs are based on partial estimates and have not been truly validated with before and after studies using actual data except for one blood alcohol content measure (“Reduction of BAC limit from 0.08% to 0.05%” with extensive advertising and strict enforcement). Since some of the CRFs found were from countries outside the US, such as Switzerland and Canada, and since the road transportation system of the US is fairly similar to Western Europe the strategies used for crash reduction will usually be applicable to Ohio. The range for the CRFs reported in the literature for driver education, driver licensing, testing and enforcement are summarized in the conclusion section of the report. The ranges for CRFs for driver education, licensing programs, and enforcement measures are less than 1% to 32%, 0%-17% and 2%-51% respectively. A prioritized implementation plan based on the highest CRFs reported has been proposed for driver education, licensing and enforcement.