Traffic Injury Prevention (2013) 14, 584–591 Copyright C  Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1538-9588 print / 1538-957X online DOI: 10.1080/15389588.2012.743125 Crash Involvement of Motor Vehicles in Relationship to the Number and Severity of Traffic Offenses. An Exploratory Analysis of Dutch Traffic Offenses and Crash Data CHARLES GOLDENBELD 1 , MARTINE REURINGS 1,2 , YVETTE VAN NORDEN 1,3 , and HENK STIPDONK 1 1 Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV, Leidschendam, The Netherlands 2 Dutch State Treasury Agency, Ministry of Finance, The Hague, The Netherlands 3 Erasmus University Medical Center, Department of Trials and Statistics, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Received 15 October 2012, Accepted 21 October 2012 Objective: To establish the statistical relationship between offenses and crashes when the unit of analysis is the vehicle instead of the driver, to show the influence of the severity (e.g., minor speed offenses) on this relationship, and to research whether the form of this relationship is similar in different enforcement contexts. Methods: An exploratory analysis was conducted using Dutch traffic offense and crash data. Crash data included all police-registered crashes involving motorized and registered vehicles in 2009; offense data included all non-criminal traffic offenses registered during 2005–2009 (mostly camera detected). Together these comprise an estimated 97 percent of all traffic offenses registered in this period. The analysis was done on a level of identified vehicles rather than persons. Vehicles involved in crashes were matched to vehicles involved in traffic offenses. The offense frequency distributions of registered crash involved vehicles and a random selection of vehicles was analyzed. Two comparisons were made: (1) privately owned vehicles versus company-owned vehicles and (2) vehicles for which only minor speed offenses were registered versus vehicles for which at least one major speed offense was registered. Results: An increase in traffic offense frequency coincides with a stronger increase in relative crash involvement. This relationship was adequately described by a power function. The slightly more than linear increase in the crash risk for vehicles with only minor speed offenses suggests that minor speed offenses (<10 km/h over the limit) contributed slightly to crashes. This relationship was unlikely to be caused by increased distance traveled only. For vehicles with at least one or more major speed violation an approximately quadratic increase of crash risk with increasing speed offense frequency was found. A comparison of Dutch and Canadian data showed a much more progressive offense–crash relationship in the Dutch data. Conclusion: The crash involvement of vehicles increased more than linearly with the number of minor traffic violations. Thus, automatic detection of minor offenses bears relevance to safety. The substantial increase in crash rates with speed offense frequency for vehicles with at least one major speed violation suggests that these vehicles represent a specific group with a significantly increased crash risk, especially in the case of many minor offenses. The more progressive relationship between offenses and crashes in The Netherlands when compared to Canada was hypothesized to result from the higher intensity camera enforcement levels and less severe consequences in the Dutch enforcement and adjudication system. Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher’s online edition of Traffic Injury Prevention to view the supplemental file. Keywords: crashes, traffic offenses, speed offenses, enforcement Introduction Previous research regarding the relationship between the fre- quency of traffic violations and crash rate shows evidence of Address correspondence to Charles Goldenbeld, Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV, Duindoorn 32, 2262 AR Lei- dschendam, The Netherlands. E-mail: charles.goldenbeld@ swov.nl a positive relationship between offenses and crashes and a stronger relationship for serious offenses (Chen et al. 1995; Cooper 1997; Gebers and Peck 2003; Zaidel 2001). Because this research is by no means conclusive and exposes a degree of uncertainty related to certain relationships, additional re- search is needed to explore these unknowns (referred to as grey areas). This exploratory study undertakes an analysis of Dutch offense and crash data in order to provide some preliminary answers to the grey areas in this field of expertise. Downloaded by [Bibliotheek TU Delft] at 05:20 07 August 2013