AN EXAMINATION OF THE CRASH INVOLVEMENT RATES OF NOVICE DRIVERS AGED 16 TO 55

There is general agreement in the literature that both age and driving experience correlate with aggregated accident risk for driver populations. The very young and beginning drivers have been classified as groups that are overrepresented in crashes, but unfortunately the former is often used as a surrogate for conclusions concerning the latter. The research that we undertook examined the interactions of various driving exposure and accident characteristics with both culpable and nonculpable crash involvements for 149,000 British Columbia novice drivers between the ages of 16 and 55. In assessing the results of our enquiry we were unable to substantiate that any of the supposed ''risky'' driving situations often proposed for graduated licencing system exposure restrictions (such as nighttime curfews, no highway driving, etc.) more adversely affected drivers in their first as compared to subsequent two years of driving, even though some (such as alcohol presence) were significantly correlated with accident fault assessment. The results did, however, suggest that license restrictions or some other form of sanction applied following initial traffic law contraventions could address a substantial proportion of subsequent crash involvement likelihood. When considering only young novices (aged 16 to 18 years), the results were not greatly different, although for these drivers the carrying of passengers was found to be significantly more associated with first-year crashes than with those in subsequent years.