Essay: Study On Traffic Accidents Among University Students' Self-Reported Experience.

A study from 2001 to 2010, shows that there has a an average annual increase of 0.9% / year in the number of serious injuries to people due to road vehicular traffic crashes (RVTC)(1). The study further showed that 1.1% of the people injured had a high threat to life.  Representation of young drivers in serious road accidents is considerably higher in all forms of road accidents (2,3). Risky driving as been classified as driving when fatigued, driving under the influence of alcohol, speeding and not wearing seat-belts. Speeding has been found to be cause for the highest frequency of mortality and morbidity.

Risk taking behaviour of the drivers is a major contributor to mortality and morbidity (4). Researchers have tried to distinguish risk taking behaviours into drivers who take risks to add a thrill factor and reckless behaviours. Risk taking amongst university students has been seen as a personality trait to predict road trauma. Researchers found that the propensity of university students for thrill and adventure as a form of sensation(5). Researchers have established a correlation between risky driving behaviour and sensation, however they have not been able to correlate risky diving with road crash.

Rowden et al.(6) suggests that the aggression behaviour of the driver depends on the type of vehicle – motorcycle or car. The vehicle type defines the exposure of the driver to injury. As such the driver of a car believes that he is less prone injury and hence has a more aggressive driving behaviour. Research indicates that enforcement of driving rules amongst young drivers has not been highly successful, due to their behaviour of taking risks. (7) Bates, Scott-Parker, Allen & Watson (2016) suggest age-specific as well as time (of the day) specific campaign and enforcement to prevent drivers from seeking thrill.

To prevent young risky drivers (8) suggest parental involvement in the driver-learning process as well as the graduated driver learning (GDL) program as followed in Queensland.  

We describe a study designed to evaluate the self reported experience of traffic accidents among university students. The results reported in the study is of three years during which the students self reported of or more traffic accidents. The study was necessitated due to the increased tendency of university students to be involved in traffic accidents as a result of seeking aggression, thrill or risk-acceptance. 

We performed a longitudinal study to access the self reported experience of traffic accidents among university students.  University students were enrolled in the first year of study when they could self-report incidences of traffic accidents in which they were involved. The study continued for three years during which period students reported traffic accidents in which they were involved. All students below the age of 18 were excluded from the study.

Traffic accidents of the students were measured with aggression, thrill and risk acceptance. Driver aggression, Thrill seeking and risk acceptance of the students was measured using the Donovan Scale of driving behaviour.

The variables of the study were presented as frequencies and percentages. Hypothesis testing was done to test for differences in groups. All statistical analysis was done at 0.05 level of significance, using SPSS ver 20. Traffic accidents was measured through aggression, thrill seeking and risk acceptance of the student. Binary Logistic Regression was used to find the impact of demography, driving distance and driving behaviour of the students.

Statistical Analysis

The study protocols were approved by the ACU Ethical Research Committee.

A total of 32796 students were enrolled in the study. Students whose age was 18 years formed the bulk of the study group (30.7%), while students aged above 26 years formed the smallest group (9.7%) Table 1.  The mean age of the students was 20.50 years with standard deviation of 4.89 years. The maximum age of the students was 59. Females constituted 73% of the students enrolled in the study. 41% of the students enrolled were from NSW while 4.5% of the students were from ACT. 53.9% of the students were living at home, while 17.7% where living with college as student accommodation.  Domestic students constituted 83.3% of the total number of students involved in the study (Table 2).

Driver aggression, thrill seeking and risk acceptance studies were done on gender, geographical background of domestic students and study mode of the students.  Studies show both sexes have equal tendency to be aggressive (p = 0.529), seek thrill (p = 0.576) and accept risk (p = 0.828) while driving. In addition the geographical background of domestic students also did not have any statistically significant differences in aggression (p = 0.074), thrill (p = 0.063) and risk acceptance (p = 0.795). Further, the study mode of the student, weather full time or part time did not change the aggression (p=0.883), thrill (p = 0.891) and risk acceptance (p = 0.557) driving behaviour of the student.

Further studies showed that there were statistically significant differences in presence or absence of self reported number of traffic accidents for aggression, thrill and risk acceptance (p < 0.001) (Table 3). The study found that most of the students did not have any road accident due to aggression, thrill and risk acceptance behaviour. Moreover there was no difference in terms of depression and Gender, Metropolitan background, study mode and Fee Status (p> 0.05) (Table 4).

For the demographic profile of the students the study found that increase in age of the student reduced the number the number of road accidents (Table 5). The impact of age group (-0.214) on traffic accidents was found to be statistically significant (p< 0.001). In addition female drivers caused less number of road accidents. Further students who stay at residential environment caused more number of road accidents as compared to those who stayed at home. On the other hand, independent students caused less number of road accidents as compared to those who stayed at home.  The ratio of number of road traffic accidents caused by international students to domestic students was found to be 0.412. The impact of road traffic accidents by international students to domestic students was statistically significant (p<0.001).

Moreover the study found that students who drove more than 10 km/ week were caused less number of traffic accidents in last one year (Table 6). Further with increase in aggression of the driver, thrill seeking behaviour and risk acceptance of the student the chances of one traffic accident in the last one year increased by 0.543, 0.662 and 0.598 respectively (Table 7). The impact of aggression, thrill and risk acceptance were all statistically significant (p< 0.001).

Ethics Approval

Independent sample t-test has showed that there are no differences in gender between the risk behaviour of the drivers. This is in contrast to research done by others who have shown that driving behaviour is different across sexes (9) (10).  The propensity for aggression, thrill and risk acceptance amongst gender is the same. Similarly study mode of the student did not affect driver aggression, thrill and risk acceptance of the student. This can be attributed to the fact that most of the drivers had either metropolitan background or had different study mode were all domestic students. As such driver behaviours did not change.

Analysis of logistic regression studies showed that increase in age reduced the chances of road traffic accidents. Similarly females are less prone to cause traffic accidents compared to males (11). In addition, international students cause more number of traffic accidents as compared to domestic students. The increased number of traffic accidents by international students can be attributed to the fact that they are not accustomed to the driving standards of Australia.

Logistic regression studies showed that the number of road traffic accidents increased with increase in aggression, thrill seeking and risk acceptance of the university students. In fact the thrill seeking behaviour impacts the number of road traffic accidents the most followed by risk acceptance and driver aggression (12).

Self-reporting of traffic accidents of the students serves as limitation of the study.

References

References should be in Vancouver style and should not appear as endnotes.

References to material on the Internet should include the organisation, the page title, the article title and the author (if there is one) as well as the URL and the month the page was visited (see examples here).

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