As part of Vision 2001, the Standing Committee on Road Safety Research and Policies created a task force on high risk drivers (HRD). A key item of the task force mandate is to develop an overall strategy to deal with the HRD – it is the purpose of this document. High risk drivers persistently engage in a range of behaviours such as impaired driving, non use of seat belts, speeding and running red lights that increase their probability of being involved in collisions resulting in fatalities and/or serious injuries. Using a HRD operational definition of either being a hard core drinking driver (BAC ³ .16, refusal or repeat offender) or involved in 3 distinct events (violations or crashes) in a two-year period, the HRDs represent 3% to 4% of Canadian drivers and they will be involved in approximately 12% of fatal crashes and 8% of injury crashes that occur in the next two years. Given the current level of enforcement, most high risk behaviours remain undetected and thus, the magnitude of the problem is significantly larger than what can actually be generated by driver records. By definition, the HRD is reluctant to change his behaviour and accordingly, carefulness is advisable in setting goals. The proposed objective is: • to reduce by 20% the number of fatalities and serious injuries associated with the high risk driver by 2010. In order to achieve the objective, the strategy identifies several effective directions in terms of research, technology, promotion, legislation and enforcement. Therefore, it is recommended that: 1. The CCMTA endorses the overall Strategy to deal with the high risk driver and sets a 10-year timeframe for its implementation (as part of the Road Safety Vision 2010); In order to be effective, the HRD strategy requires that jurisdictions implement all core elements. Furthermore, it is suggested that special attention must be given to the following: • Based on the operational definition, each jurisdiction will assess the size of its HRD population and its crash involvement by the end of 2002, and again in 2005 and 2010; this will have to be done accordingly to the methodology developed by the Research Task Force; • Each jurisdiction will review its legislation according to the core elements identified for young drivers, hard core drinking drivers, and drivers with 3 previous distinct events; • The level of detection of HRDs must be significantly increased through earlier intervention and supported by automated enforcement or other conventional means; • The HRD task force produces an annual monitoring report on progress made toward the implementation of the strategy. (Author/publisher)
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