Citation

Hyman MM. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1970; 11(1967): 129-153.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1970, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The term "accident" connotes a chance happening. A crash may or may not be accidental. Human factors in the fortuitousness or lack of fortuitousness in motor vehicle traffic crashes and accidents have been investigated by a number of researchers on the following variables: driving behavior variables, visual measures, reaction time measures, psychomotor apparatus variables, paper-pencil tests, sensory perceptual tests, cognitive measures, personal emotional attitudinal measures, sociological background measures, fatigue and alcohol (either ingestion or blood alcohol concentrations). In a review of eighty of these studies, Leon Goldstein of the Division of Accident Prevention Program, U.S. Public Health Service, concludes that the factors most strongly associated with disproportionately high crash vulnerability are youth, old age, blood alcohol concentrations above 0.05 percent or so, and unfavorable records from local agencies and institutions. Similar conclusions have been reached by McFarland in a series of reviews dealing with traffic crashes and youth, old age, alcohol, and unfavorable reports from local agencies and institutions, indicative of irresponsible social behavior. The data on persons apprehended for driving in Santa Clara County and Columbus converge but are not identical with those on BAC distributions of crash or control drivers in Grand Rapids. First, apprehended intoxicated driving is most heavily concentrated among males twenty-five to fifty-four. Second, DWI's are predominantly residents of census tracts characterized by low socioeconomic status, low per cent of homeowners, high unemployment, high per cent of broken homes, and a high per cent of Negroes or Spanish Americans or both. It appears that within the age-sex category where driving after heavy drinking is most prevalent, this behavioral configuration usually involves demographic elements of the population whose representatives are, on the whole, more likely than other elements of the population to be alienated from social norms that regulate conduct and from social ties that motivate people to avoid dangerous or inappropriate behavior. Epidemiologically, the latter set of findings are convergent, but by no means identical with the demographic distributions observed for certain types of reported crime and delinquency, certain types of hospitalized psychoses and some, but not all, of the manifestations of problem drinking. These findings are not inconsistent with those of Mulford and of Cosper which indicate that driving after some drinking is no less common among persons of high socioeconomic status than among others. Mulford and Cosper's data refer to driving after any drinking rather than driving after heavy drinking or inappropriate drinking-driving. There are reasons to believe that driving after drinking small quantities of alcohol in appropriate quantities, times, places and situational contexts is a quite different behavioral configuration from deviant or inappropriate drinking driving and a distinction between the two phenomena should be made in reseach strategy, education, and law enforcement.