Pre-licensed driving experience and car crash involvement during the learner and restricted, licence stages of graduated driver licensing: Findings from the New Zealand drivers study.

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether pre-licence driving experiences, that is driving before beginning the licensing process, increased or decreased crash risk as a car driver, during the learner or the restricted licence stages of the graduated driver licensing system (GDLS).

Method: Study participants were 15-24 year old members of the New Zealand Drivers Study (NZDS) - a prospective cohort study of newly licensed car drivers. The interview stages of the NZDS are linked to, the three licensing stages of the GDLS: learner, restricted and full.

Validity of using linked hospital and police traffic crash records to analyse motorcycle injury crash characteristics.

Linking hospital discharge and police traffic crash records has been used to provide information on causes and outcomes for hospitalised traffic crash cases. Motorcyclists are particularly vulnerable to injury in a traffic crash, but no published linkage studies have reported in detail on this road user group. The present study examined motorcycle traffic crash injury cases in New Zealand in 2000-2004 by probabilistically linking national hospital discharge records with police traffic crash reports.

Reducing young driver crash casualties in Great Britain - use of routine police crash data to estimate the potential benefits of graduated driver licensing.

Crashes involving young drivers (YD) cause significant morbidity and mortality in Great Britain (GB). Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) is used in some countries to address this. This study assessed potential casualty and cost savings of possible GDL programmes in GB.

Age, period and cohort effects on the incidence of motorcyclist casualties in traffic crashes.

Objectives: (1) Estimate age, period and cohort effects for motorcyclist traffic casualties 1979-2008 in New Zealand and (2) forecast the incidence of New Zealand motorcycle traffic casualties for the period 2019-2023 assuming future age, cohort and period effects, and compare these with an estimate based on simple linear extrapolation.

Methods: Age-period-cohort (APC) modelling was used to estimate the individual effects of age, period and cohort after adjusting for the other two factors. Forecasting was produced for three period-effect scenarios.

A longitudinal examination of the relationship between adolescent problem behaviors and traffic crash involvement during young adulthood.

Previous research examining the relationship between adolescent problem behaviors and young adult traffic outcomes (crashes, convictions, risky driving) has produced differing results. Possible reasons for this may be the heterogeneity of the crash outcomes (from minor fender-benders to fatal crashes), the gender of the driver, and/or the age of the driver. The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship between adolescent problem behaviors and young adult crashes to determine the extent to which the above factors influenced this relationship.

Minimum purchasing age for alcohol and traffic crash injuries among 15- to 19-year-olds in New Zealand.

Objectives: In 1999, New Zealand lowered the minimum purchasing age for alcohol from 20 to 18 years. We tested the hypothesis that this increased traffic crash injuries among 15- to 19-year-olds.

Methods: Poisson regression was used to compute incidence rate ratios for the after to before incidence of alcohol-involved crashes and hospitalized injuries among 18- to 19-year-olds and 15- to 17-year-olds (20- to 24-year-olds were the reference).

Identifying factors that predict persistent driving after drinking, unsafe driving after drinking, and driving after using cannabis among young adults.

Unlabelled: The main aim of this study was to identify adolescent/young adulthood factors that predicted persistent driving after drinking, persistent unsafe driving after drinking, and persistent cannabis use and driving among young adults. It was a longitudinal study of a birth cohort (n=933, 474 males and 459 females) and was based on data collected at ages 15, 18, 21 and 26 years. At each of these ages members of the cohort attended the research unit for a personal interview by a trained interviewer, using a standardised questionnaire.