POINTS OR PRISON? THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT SANCTIONS ON DRIVING BEHAVIOR

We compare two reforms aimed at reducing road accidents in Italy. The Penalty Points System (PPS) provides drivers with a score and curtails points after infractions. The license is temporarily suspended when points are exhausted. Losing points is easy, but the penalty is mild. The Road Homicide (RH) introduces heavy penalties in the rare event of injuries and/or fatalities. In terms of probability and intensity of the penalty the two policies are therefore diametrically opposed. We find that injuries and fatalities decrease more with PPS than with RH. Comparing costs and benefits, we conclude that strong penalties are not beneficial. (JEL D91, K14, K42, R41)     

Traffic fatalities: does income inequality create an externality?

Abstract .  Responsible for 20 million severe injuries and/or deaths annually, few epidemics receive less attention than traffic accidents. Going beyond confirming an inverted U-shaped relationship between mean income and fatalities, we show theoretically that income inequality can positively affect fatalities in two ways. Each operates through heterogeneity between road users, and while the direct effect can be expected to evaporate with rising income, the indirect effect may prove to be an externality in that the relationship remains regardless of the level of income. Our model is supported by evidence from 79 countries between 1970 and 2000.     

Gas prices,beer taxes and GDL programmes: effects on auto fatalities among young adults in the US

Efforts to reduce teenage driving fatalities can be categorized as: enhancing driving skills, constraining driving behaviour and limiting the exposure of young drivers to the road. This article uses state-year specific Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data on the motor vehicle fatalities of young adults aged 15–24 to estimate the effects of gasoline prices, beer taxes and the enactment of Graduated Drivers License (GDL) programmes over the 1985–2006 period. Results indicate that a 10% increase in gasoline prices reduce fatalities by 3.2–6.2%. The largest percentage reductions occurred among 15- to 17-year-old drivers. 10% higher beer taxes were estimated to reduce motor vehicle fatalities among young drivers by approximately 1.3%. In this case, there was virtually no effect on 15- to 17-year-old drivers. Finally, the introduction of more restrictive GDL programmes, those with a 6-month learner's permit phase and subsequent limits on early nighttime driving or on the number of passengers, reduced fatalities among 15- to 17-year-old drivers by 24%. The effects on 18- to 21-year-old drivers were smaller and the weakest GDL programmes had no effect on fatalities.     

城市道路交通流对交通安全的影响分析研究

城市道路交通是由人、车、路、环境等基本要素构成的动态复杂相互融合的系统。在这四个因素之中,单纯由其中单个因素引起的道路交通事故非常少,通常都是几个因素共同作用下的结果。从城市道路交通流的交通组成和交通量两个方面对交通安全的影响进行分析研究,以期给城市道路交通条件的改善提供明确的方向。     

How Effective Are Non‐Monetary Instruments for Safe Driving? Panel Data Evidence on the Effect of the Demerit Point System in Denmark

Using unusually rich longitudinal data on traffic offenses, this paper exploits a reform that introduced a point‐recording scheme in Denmark to estimate the behavioral responses of drivers to a non‐monetary penalty based on demerit points. We find that drivers exhibited substantial behavioral responses to each demerit point assigned to their driving licenses. We also find that drivers’ efforts, and hence responses, increased with the number of demerit points they accumulated. Depending on the number of demerit points accumulated, drivers with one or more demerit points reduced their frequency of traffic offenses by 9–34 percent.     

北京城市边缘交通事故地理研究

本文在探讨城市交通环境结构和交通事故潜育模型的基础上，分析了北京城市边缘带交通事故的时间变化和空间分布的特点和规律，并阐明北京城市边缘带事故频发性的主要原因是其交通环境的城乡过渡特点以及由此导致的行人和驾驶员的心理失衡。     

Driving fatalities after 9/11: a hidden cost of terrorism

We show that the public's response to terrorist threats can have unintended consequences that rival the attacks themselves in severity. Driving fatalities increased significantly after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, events that prompted many travellers to substitute road transportation for safer air transportation. After controlling for time trends, weather, road conditions and other factors, we find that travellers’ response to 9/11 resulted in 327 driving deaths per month in late 2001. Moreover, while the effect of 9/11 weakened over time, as many as 2300 driving deaths may be attributable to the attacks.     

Future information systems for road transport: A Delphi panel-derived scenario

Modern information and microelectronic technology can be used to improve road traffic. The aim of this study is to create scenarios on how new information systems for improved road traffic can evolve. What are the driving forces? Who can act? Who can benefit? What are the social impacts?Through the use of a Delphi panel of professionals, researchers, and informed generalists, we have gathered impulses for the scenarios on how information technology, communication means, and control systems can reshape future road traffic. The issue studied is how this “Road Transport Informatics” (RTI) will evolve.     

The Determinants of Risk Aversion: The Role of Intergenerational Transmission

This article studies the relationship between risk attitudes and individual characteristics focusing on the intergenerational transmission of risk preferences. We use a dataset of a sample of Italian students which allows us to build different measures of risk aversion based, respectively, on a survey asking students about their willingness to invest in a risky asset and about their preferences for job security and on the results of an entry test using explicit penalty points in the case of incorrect answers. In line with the findings highlighted by the existing literature, we find that women are more risk averse than men, more patient subjects are more risk averse, while high‐ability students are less risk averse. As far as intergenerational transmission of preferences is concerned, it emerges that students whose fathers are entrepreneurs have a higher propensity to take risks, while students whose fathers are employed in the public sector are more risk averse. Only fathers matter with regards to their children's risk attitudes. These results are robust to different measures of risk aversion and to different specifications of our model.     

Reimbursement schemes for hospitals: the impact of case and firm characteristics

We contribute to the debate on high-powered versus low-powered incentives in regulation by studying their heterogeneous impacts on different subpopulations, using data from the introduction of a high-powered prospective payment system (PPS) for hospital reimbursement in Germany. While no overall effect on quality or cost saving is found, our results support hypotheses drawn from an incentive and selection perspective: PPS reduces the length of stay of older relative to younger patients, of more severe relative to less severe cases, and in smaller relative to larger hospitals. Hospitals which adopted PPS earlier provide higher quality under PPS as proxied by the case-specific readmission rate. Our study also contributes to the health economic literature on hospital reimbursement as our data permits us to identify the treatment effect via different timings of adoption of PPS and to use a more accurate quality measure by following patients even when readmitted to other hospitals.     

Pedestrian fatality and natural light: Evidence from South Africa using a Bayesian approach

In this paper we use a Bayesian approach to investigate the relationship between pedestrian fatality records from Tshwane and time of fatality. Time of fatality is used as a proxy to reflect the presence of effective lighting, not precluding the presence of any other lighting intervention. In South Africa, for a large proportion (60%) walking is a primary means of transport, with about 45% of all deaths on South African roads being pedestrian. Such reports call for attention to be devoted to analyzing pedestrian fatalities records to locate possible directions of intervention. Results from this analysis reveals that not only does time of day influence pedestrian fatality counts, but also within road types, Municipal roads were the most prone to pedestrian fatalities followed by National roads, while the Regional roads were the least prone to pedestrian fatalities.     

Traffic accidents,deaths and alcohol consumption

The main goal of this article is to analyse the relationship existing among prices of alcoholic beverages, alcohol consumption and traffic fatalities for the Spanish Autonomous Communities during the time interval 1998 to 2002. Among the main results, we highlight a positive correlation between alcohol consumption and traffic mortality rate. Basically, governments implement two kinds of policies to reduce the traffic mortality rate. One is oriented to control the supply of alcohol by increasing alcohol taxes. The other is oriented to preserve traffic security, increasing the number of sanctions for traffic rule infraction. We find evidence that both policies exert a positive influence in the reduction of traffic fatalities. There is no empirical evidence to indicate that being a novice driver increases the tendency to be involved in a mortal traffic accident.     

DO PLAYERS REACT TO SANCTION CHANGES? EVIDENCE FROM THE ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE

This paper evaluates the impact on three types of offences, red card fouls, yellow card fouls, and no‐card fouls of Fédération Internationale de Football Association's introduction of a rule change in 1998 by exploiting the competitive variation in English Premier League football games over two seasons. A key result of this paper is that as more offences became eligible for red cards, the number of red cards did not increase after the introduction of the new law. The results indicate that the relationship between non‐red card fouls and many of their determinants appears to have changed significantly between the 1997–8 and 1998–9 seasons. The findings in the paper are consistent with the view that an increase in the severity of the sanction associated with a tackle from behind raised the number of no‐card and yellow card fouls.     

The influence of road characteristics on road accidents in Belgium: An econometric approach

The problem of road accidents has taken a particular accuity in most developed countries since the end of the Second World War, Among the numerous determinants of road accidents, the article isolates the influence of road characteristics. The analysis has been made by multiple regressions on a sample of road sections distributed among the nine Belgian provinces, the dependant variables being the rates (per million vehicles-kilometers) of accidents, of killed on the spot, of slightly and of seriously injured. Significant coefficients of influence have been obtained for the following characteristics: sinuosity of horizontal and of vertical profile of the road, average number of level crossings, presence of trees along the road, absence of lighting at night, crossings of built areas and number of lanes. The article also contains some comments about the speed limitation introduced in 1971.     

Decomposing the determinants of road traffic demand

This study presents a decomposition of the basic fundamental determinants of road traffic and fuel demand. A general framework is proposed as a means of analysing the impacts of changes in prices and income on the demand for fuel and traffic volume. The objective is to provide a general basis for comparing different road traffic elasticity estimates and for understanding how a variety of different factors work together to create overall road traffic and fuel demand responses. The study emphasizes relationships between different price and income elasticity measures and uses estimates from the literature to evaluate the main determinants of demand including some previously unobserved effects.     

Traffic congestion: an experimental study of the Downs-Thomson paradox

This study considers a model of road congestion with average cost pricing. Subjects must choose between two routes—Road and Metro. The travel cost on the road is increasing in the number of commuters who choose this route, while the travel cost on the metro is decreasing in the number of its users. We examine how changes to the road capacity, the number of commuters, and the metro pricing scheme influence the commuters’ route-choice behavior. According to the Downs-Thomson paradox, improved road capacity increases travel times along both routes because it attracts more users to the road and away from the metro, thereby worsening both services. A change in route design generates two Nash equilibria; and the resulting coordination problem is amplified even further when the number of commuters is large. We find that, similar to other binary choice experiments with congestion effects, aggregate traffic flows are close to the equilibrium levels, but systematic individual differences persist over time.     

High-speed rail and inventory reduction: firm-level evidence from China

Using a balanced panel of manufacturing firms from China between 2007 and 2013, we estimate that being connected to a high-speed rail (HSR) system leads to 9.5% reduction in local firms’ input inventory spending. The effect is stronger for downstream industries and private enterprises. A back-of-envelope calculation suggests that each dollar of HSR investment reduces input inventory stock by 12 cents, which is significantly larger than the effects found in previous studies based on highway or road investment. Declines in transportation and communication cost, as well as agglomeration effect, are identified as plausible mechanisms. Our findings reveal a micro channel through which improved transport infrastructure brings about economic gains, and contribute to the cost-benefit assessment of HSR investment.     

Would my driving pattern change if my neighbor were to buy an emission-free car?

Aiming to reduce the number of brown (polluting) cars on the road, several countries currently promote the purchase and use of green (emission-free) cars through financial and non-financial incentives. We study how such incentives affect consumers who continue to drive brown cars. Using a simple model, we analyze the effects of policy instruments such as subsidizing green cars, taxing brown cars, and allowing green cars to drive in bus lanes. Car owners are influenced by price incentives as well as by external effects from traffic (such as congestion) both in regular lanes and in bus lanes. An extension of the model also considers how changes in local driving habits affect brown-car driving. We find that subsidizing green cars and allowing them to drive in bus lanes might increase brown-car driving. We also report the results of a recent survey containing questions specifically designed to tap the significance of the model’s core mechanisms. The results are partially consistent with propositions derived from the model. While most brown-car respondents report their driving was unchanged after the implementation of the policies to promote green cars, some – particularly in major cities – report that these policies caused them to reduce or increase their driving. We conclude that some mechanisms in our model are more important than others and that certain mechanisms appear to influence different brown-car drivers in different ways. Overall, it seems that Norwegian policies to promote the transition from brown to green cars have somewhat reduced brown-car driving.     

沥青路面平整度控制措施研究

路面平整度是衡量高等级公路使用性能的一项重要指标。通过控制路基施工质量和基层平整度、处理好施工接缝和桥梁伸缩缝、改善摊铺和碾压等施工工艺、控制施工材料质量等措施来提高沥青路面的初始平整度;开放交通后在道路管理方面,通过加强超载车辆的控制、提高道路养护水平等,来减缓沥青路面平整度的衰减。以此来提高沥青路面的平整度,解决行车颠簸问题、提高行车的速度。