Institute of Transportation, MOTC

Title	Causality Relationship between Drunk Driving Accidents and Violations
Year	2018
Degree	Master
School	Department of Transportation and Logistics Management National Chiao Tung University
Author
Summary	Whether the increase in police enforcement can effectively curtail the occurrence of traffic accidents has always been an issue that has not yet been confirmed both academically and practically. Nevertheless, from the perspectives of government administration or people expectation, enforcement is generally regarded as the most effective way to mitigate illegal behaviors. Based on this, this study attemtps to investigate the mutually causal relationship between drunk-driving violations and drunk-driving accidents, along with the key factors contributing to the violations and the accidents.To do so, this study first collects a panel data of drunk-driving violations and accidents of 22 cities/counties in Taiwan from January 2007 to December 2016. Granger causality test is used to examine the potential mutually causal relationship between the number of drunk-driving violations and the number of drunk-driving accidents. Afterward, a simultaneous equation regression model is used to further identify the key factors contributing to the violations and accidents based on the causal relationship and the number of lagged months signficnatly tested by Granger causality.The results of Granger causality test show that the Granger causal relationship between the vioaltions and the accidents has significant difference between urban and rural areas. In urban cities (such as Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung and Tainan), the violations and accidents have a causal interaction with a one month lagged effect. However, the Granger causality between the violations and accidents does not exist in rural cities/counties. The estimated simultaneous equation model shows that the stricter new standards for alcohol levels, effective on June 13 2017, have effectively curtailed the number of drunk-driving accidents. Meanwhile, the number of violation enforcement, increase in public transportation market share, population density, reduce in motorcycle ownership also reduce the number of drunk-driving accidents. As to the number of drunk-driving violations, population density and expenditures in police administration would help to mitigate the violations. Corresponding countermeasures to curtail the number of drunk-driving violations and accidents are then proposed accordingly.
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