Biomedical subjects

Michael A Gebers

Publications and source records attributed to Michael A Gebers.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

An examination of the characteristics and traffic risks of drivers suspended/revoked for different reasons.

PROBLEM: Prior research has demonstrated that suspended/revoked drivers pose a significant traffic risk, but until now little has been known about whether, and if so how, this risk varies as a function of the reason for suspension/revocation. METHOD: This study classifies suspended/revoked drivers into subgroups based on their reason for suspension/revocation, and then develops demographic and driving record profiles for each group. Separate driving record profiles are developed for the following traffic safety indicators, measured 3 years prior to the suspension/revocation action: (a) total crashes, (b) fatal/injury crashes, (c) total traffic convictions, and (d) total incidents (crashes + convictions). RESULTS: The findings clearly show that: (a) suspended/revoked drivers are a heterogeneous group, both demographically and in their driving behavior; (b) some suspended drivers, such as those suspended/revoked for a non-driving offense, have low traffic risks that are not much higher than those of validly-licensed drivers, and; (c) all suspended groups have elevated crash and conviction rates, compared to validly-licensed drivers. DISCUSSION: The implications of these findings for current laws and policies targeting suspended/revoked drivers are discussed, and recommendations for improving these laws/policies are presented. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: None.

Accidents, Traffic↗

PubMed2003

Using traffic conviction correlates to identify high accident-risk drivers.

One of the primary missions of the California Department of Motor Vehicles is to protect the public from drivers who represent unacceptably high accident risks. Optimum fulfillment of this objective requires the development and implementation of strategies for identifying high-risk drivers. One such system in California is the department's negligent operator point system. This system assigns points to moving violations and accidents and authorizes the department to take driver control actions against drivers who meet the prima facie definition of a negligent operator. The present study explored the viability of predicting accidents from equations constructed to predict convictions for the general driving population. Equations or models that better identify drivers at increased risk of future accident involvement would increase the number of accidents prevented through post license control actions. Although the results did not support prior findings that equations keyed to citations do as well as or better than equations keyed to accidents in predicting subsequent accident involvement, a canonical correlation approach considering subsequent accident and citation rates simultaneously produced a 14.9% improvement in the classification accuracy or "hit rate" for identifying accident-involved drivers.

Accidents, Traffic↗