Prediction of vehicle crashes by drivers' characteristics and past traffic violations in Korea using a zero-inflated negative binomial model

<p><b>Aims</b>: Traffic safety is a significant public health challenge, and vehicle crashes account for the majority of injuries. This study aims to identify whether drivers' characteristics and past traffic violations may predict vehicle crashes in Korea.</p> <p><b>Methods</b>: A total of 500,000 drivers were randomly selected from the 11.6 million driver records of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs in Korea. Records of traffic crashes were obtained from the archives of the Korea Insurance Development Institute. After matching the past violation history for the period 2004–2005 with the number of crashes in year 2006, a total of 488,139 observations were used for the analysis. Zero-inflated negative binomial model was used to determine the incident risk ratio (IRR) of vehicle crashes by past violations of individual drivers. The included covariates were driver's age, gender, district of residence, vehicle choice, and driving experience.</p> <p><b>Results</b>: Drivers violating (1) a hit-and-run or drunk driving regulation at least once and (2) a signal, central line, or speed regulation more than once had a higher risk of a vehicle crash with respective IRRs of 1.06 and 1.15. Furthermore, female gender, a younger age, fewer years of driving experience, and middle-sized vehicles were all significantly associated with a higher likelihood of vehicle crashes.</p> <p><b>Conclusions</b>: Drivers' demographic characteristics and past traffic violations could predict vehicle crashes in Korea. Greater resources should be assigned to the provision of traffic safety education programs for the high-risk driver groups.</p

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for overweight/obesity in boys and girls.

<p>Self-reported BMI had the greatest AUC for both sexes. In boys, CBS had a higher AUC than WSR and WC, while in girls the AUCs of CBS, WSR and WC were comparable. (A) AUC for boys: self-reported BMI (0.89); CBS (0.85); self-reported WC (0.80); self-reported WSR (0.78). (B) AUC for girls: self-reported BMI (0.90); CBS (0.81); self-reported WC (0.82); self-reported WSR (0.82).</p

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for underweight in boys and girls.

<p>Apart from BMI, CBS had the greatest AUC in both boys and girls. (A) AUC for boys: self-reported BMI (0.89); CBS (0.82); self-reported WC (0.72); self-reported WSR (0.70). (B) AUC for girls: self-reported BMI (0.88); CBS (0.81); self-reported WC (0.77); self-reported WSR (0.76).</p

Optimal current body size cut-offs for overweight/obesity and underweight by sex and age.

<p>CBS: current body size; J: Youden index; LR+: positive likelihood ratio.</p