Previous studies by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety have found that approximately one in five fatal crashes involved an unlicensed or invalidly licensed driver. This study presents new data on unlicensed and invalidly licensed drivers in fatal crashes over years 2007—2009, and examines trends in crashes involving unlicensed or invalidly licensed drivers from 1990 through 2009. Multiple imputation was used to estimate the proportion of drivers of unknown license status (2.6% of all drivers) who likely lacked a valid license. Results show that 87.2% of drivers involved in fatal crashes in years 2007—2009 had a valid license, 6.7% had a license that had had been suspended or revoked, 1.1% had a license that had expired or had been cancelled or denied, and 5.0% were unlicensed. Overall, 18.2% of fatal crashes involved a driver who was unlicensed or invalidly licensed; these crashes resulted in the deaths of 21,049 people. There was a significant increasing trend from 1990 through 2009 in the proportion of fatal-crash involved drivers who were unlicensed. It appears that this trend may have ended or even begun to reverse after 2007, however, this needs to be confirmed in future studies as data from subsequent years becomes available. The proportion of fatal-crash involved drivers of any given age who were unlicensed decreased as age increased across the entire age spectrum, whereas young adults ages 21—34 were the most likely to have had a suspended or revoked license. Nearly half of all fatal crash involved drivers who lacked a valid license (unlicensed or license suspended/revoked/expired/cancelled/ denied) were ages 21—34 (48.8%). Fifty percent of all unlicensed and invalidly licensed drivers in fatal crashes had alcohol in their system, 43.0% had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) equal to or greater than the legal limit of 0.08, and 25.1% of all drivers in fatal crashes with a BAC ? 0.08 lacked a valid license. Excluding drivers who were incapacitated or killed and thus could not have fled, an estimated 32.4% of fatal-crash involved drivers who lacked a valid license left the scene of the crash; and an estimated 51.2% of all drivers who left the scene of a fatal crash lacked a valid license. Estimates of the license status among drivers who left the scene of the crash are imprecise, however, because license status and other key data were unknown and thus imputed for nearly half of all drivers who left the scene. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting