Surveys of the driver population were conducted in Colorado, Maryland, and North Carolina for the purpose of determining driver perceptions on several different subjects, including (1) the chances of being caught by the police for specific unsafe driving actions, (2) the chances of being found guilty by the courts if a challenge were made, (3) the fine for a first violation of an offence, (4) the perceived severity of the fine, and (5) other related topics of interest of a deterrence nature. Through an independent data collection effort, it was also possible to obtain the citation history of all survey respondents and whether they had appeared in court for a particular violation. The number of citations for each type of offence was obtained for a three-year period prior to the survey. In addition, data were collected on the level of traffic law enforcement by local law enforcement agencies during the period of the survey. These data were obtained in order to control for the differences in the level of enforcement in the three jurisdictions of the survey.
Abstract