PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF THE HAZARDOUS DRIVER. REPORT, OCTOBER-1975

This paper presents three different groups of North Carolina drivers selected because of their known over- involvement in traffic accidents, the elderly driver, the repeated offender, and the young driver below age 25. The elderly driver study relates to the techniques and the reliability by which deterioration of skills in some of the elderly can be identified. North Carolina Statute 20-221 details criteria for classification of a driver as a habitual offender. Those studied were serving active prison sentences for their driving convictions. The data addresses issues of personality and driving behavior, use of predictive criteria for assessing drivers, and management of driver offenses. Yound drivers were given a battery of tests with the goal of extracting variables to comprise a single psychological instrument to identify hazardous drivers.