However, many traffic accidents probably do
not involve deliberate and blatant violations of the
accepted conventions of driving and it is possible
that tendency to commit violations is a marker of a
more widespread disregard of risks associated with
driving and lack of concern for one’s own and other’s
welfare that would put drivers at risk of any kind
of accident, whether or not a clear violation was
present. Moreover, tendency to commit violations
is closely linked with faster driving and it may be
Behaviour and types of traffic accident 573
that this in itself is the key factor for most drivers
(West et al. 1993).
Teasing apart the links in this complex network
of associations is likely to prove extremely difficult.
However, it may be possible to go some way towards
this goal by looking at specific associations between
particular behavioural or psychological factors and
different kinds of accident. For example, if it were
found that faster driving speed was associated only
with accidents in which speed could be considered
to be a causative factor, it would be reasonable to
assume that tendency to drive fast was directly
linked with greater accident risk. Conversely, if it
were found that tendency to drive fast was associated
with accidents in which drivers pulled out when
they did not have right of way, this would suggest
that it was not speed so much as some more general
characteristic of carelessness or impatience that was
important. In fact, studies have shown that younger
drivers are more likely to be killed in single-vehicle,
rollover crashes (Evans 1991), whereas older drivers
are at relatively greater risk of injury from multivehicle,
side-impact collisions (Viano et al. 1990).
This would be consistent with the former type of
accident being associated with tendency to drive too
fast and the latter type being associated with a failure
of observation.