This report compares the effectiveness of home-study and in-person courses offered under California's mature driver improvement (MDI) program. The major issue addressed in the report is whether home-study MDI courses are less effective than in-person courses in reducing fatal/injury crashes and total citations. Two secondary issues are (a) the validity of MDI course completion as an indicator of fatal/injury crash risk and (b) whether MDI courses themselves reduced fatal/injury crash risk. The study results provide little evidence that home-study courses are less effective than in-person courses in reducing fatal/injury crashes and total citations, and no evidence that MDI course graduates are at actuarially lower fatal/injury crash risk than are nonparticipants. In addition, the results indicate that the MDI program may have reduced the rate of traffic violation citations, but not the rate of fatal/injury crashes, among course graduates. (Author/publisher)
Abstract