This study evaluated the safety impact of allowing driving schools to administer the Driving Performance Evaluation (DPE) to provisional license applicants. The results of the driver record comparisons between provisional applicants tested by the driving schools and those tested by DMV did not indicate a statistically significant difference in the 6-month post-licensure accident or citation rates for the groups. Unfortunately, inadequate sample sizes and the potential biases present in the study preclude drawing any firm conclusions regarding the comparative safety impact of private versus DMV testing. However, the results of the scoring consistency and reliability analyses are more interpretable and less subject to these problems. The comparisons of scoring consistency between driving school and DMV examiners indicates that the driving school examiners followed the DPE scoring criteria less stringently than did the DMV examiners, and were far more lenient, having passed many applicants who subsequently failed the drive test at DMV. Although these findings also require qualification, it is very unlikely that differences of the magnitude observed can be attributed to bias alone. The low volume of subjects, which was a major reason for the low statistical poser of the analyses, may indicate that the market for delegated testing is small, both within the general public and the driver training industry itself. (Author/publisher)
Abstract