Traffic court does not reduce crashes later on
NEW YORK |
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Drivers who choose to fight a speeding ticket in court, rather than pay a fine by mail, are more likely to be involved in a car crash later on, a new study of Maryland drivers shows.
The researchers don’t think appearing in traffic court actually causes people to crash their cars. Instead, they say drivers who chose this approach tended to have high-risk characteristics in the first place. And in general, those who fought their speeding tickets in court had longer histories of violations and crashes.
But in seeming contrast, the researchers also noticed that the traffic court group was less likely to be cited for speeding after their initial violation.
That finding struck Ray Peck, founder of the consulting firm R.C. Peck Associates and an expert in crash risk, as very unusual.
“You tend to find the two correlated,” Peck, who was not involved in study, told Reuters Health.
The researchers, based at the University of Maryland and the National Transportation Safety Board, kept track of nearly 30,000 Maryland drivers who had been ticketed for speeding.
Thirteen thousand drivers decided not to argue. Instead, they just paid a fine by mail. The rest opted for traffic court, where drivers met with judges who determined their penalty.
Nearly a quarter of those who went to court were found not guilty, had their case dismissed, or were not prosecuted for speeding. Another half were placed on probation and paid a fine. And nearly a quarter of those in court received the toughest verdict: a fine plus a demerit point on their driver’s license — which can be serious because too many points and drivers lose their licenses.
Overall, those who went to court were 25 percent more likely to get in a car crash in the three years following their speeding ticket than those who paid a fine by mail, the research team reported in the Annals of Epidemiology.
Eleven out of every 100 people in the traffic court group were later in a crash, compared to eight of every 100 who paid a fine by mail.
“I think this relationship doesn’t mean that traffic court caused a higher crash risk among these drivers,” said Jingyi Li, the lead author of the study who is now a researcher at drugmaker AstraZeneca.
Rather, drivers who chose traffic court had a higher crash risk to begin with, Li said. They were more likely to be younger and have a poor driving history.
The incentive to appear in court, especially among repeat offenders, is that drivers can appeal for leniency. “They can explain to a judge what happened and the judge may lower their fines and put them on probation before judgment,” Li told Reuters Health. “I think that’s why traffic court provides an avenue for some high risk drivers to get away with it.”
But that doesn’t explain why those who chose traffic court were less likely to be cited for speeding afterwards.
They were eight percent less likely to get a speeding ticket in the three years following their initial ticket than the people who paid their fine by mail. Thirty-nine out of every 100 drivers who paid by mail received a speeding ticket later on, while 36 of every 100 drivers who went to traffic court were later caught speeding.
Speeding tickets “may not be a perfect measure of change in behavior,” Li said, because so many people speed and never get caught.
Peck added that the study did not examine other potential influences on drivers’ risks for subsequent speeding tickets and crashes, such as how much time they spent on the road, if the Department of Motor Vehicles took any action after they were penalized, and whether drivers were involved in traffic school.
Li said that for a punishment to be effective, it must be swift and certain, something that traffic court doesn’t provide. Court dates can be postponed and punishments are flexible.
Speed cameras might pose a bigger threat to speeders, because the evidence is more clear, Li offered. He added that traffic court is still a valuable method of enforcement and it provides a fair way for each person’s case to be heard.
Peck pointed out that the study did not include a control group — one in which people received no punishment at all — which means that it’s possible traffic court is still better in terms of preventing crashes “than if you do nothing at all.”
SOURCE: bit.ly/oEyyGd Annals of Epidemiology, online June 20, 2011.
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