The relationship between years of licensing, traffic offences, and crash involvement: implications for driver licensing in Western Australia.

The overall aim of this West Australian study was to investigate the crash and traffic offence history of new drivers for the purpose of developing recommendations for driver licensing. The specific objectives of the study were to: undertake a descriptive and comparative analysis of the crashes and traffic offences of first year drivers and drivers licensed for 10 years and 5 years; model the effect of 'years of licensing' on crash involvement, and to model the effects of traffic infringements and convictions on crash involvement among first year drivers. Compared with more experienced drivers, first year drivers were up to 3.6 times more likely to be involved in a crash. It was also found that both infringements and convictions were predictive of first year drivers' involvement in a subsequent crash and that infringements alone were predictive of first year drivers' involvement in a subsequent serious injury crash. Based on these findings and other research, a number of recommendations for driver licensing in Western Australia are proposed. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E208180.