American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on November 23, 2005
American Journal of Epidemiology 2006 163(2):188-195; doi:10.1093/aje/kwj015
Practice of Epidemiology |
Comparison between Two Quasi-Induced Exposure Methods for Studying Risk Factors for Road Crashes
1 Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
2 Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
3 Department of Statistics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
Correspondence to Pablo Lardelli-Claret, Departamento de Medicina Preventiva y Salud Pública, Facultad de Farmacia, Campus de Cartuja s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain (e-mail: lardelli{at}ugr.es).
This study was designed to compare estimates from two quasi-induced exposure methods of the effects of driver- and vehicle-related conditions on the risk of causing a road crash for drivers of vehicles with four or more wheels. From the Spanish register of road crashes with victims, the authors selected, for 1993–2002, all 755,329 drivers of 
4-wheeled vehicles involved in single-vehicle crashes or in two-vehicle collisions in which only one of the drivers was considered responsible. Multinomial and logistic regression models were used to obtain the odds ratio for each driver- and vehicle-related variable. Construction of these models was based on the assumptions of classical quasi-induced exposure methods and on the method (a paired-by-collision analysis of responsible and nonresponsible drivers) proposed by Perneger and Smith (Am J Epidemiol 1991;134:1138–45). The main driver-dependent conditions for any type of crash were psychophysical circumstances (alcohol use and sleepiness). The effect of most driver- and vehicle-related characteristics was higher for single-vehicle crashes than for two-vehicle collisions. Furthermore, both classical and paired-by-collision analyses yielded similar estimates and can be considered equally useful alternatives for assessing the effect of driver and vehicle characteristics on the risk of causing a collision between two vehicles.
accidents, traffic; automobile driving; epidemiologic methods; risk factors; vehicles
Abbreviations: OR, odds ratio; RAIR, relative accident involvement ratio