Drivers’ long-term crash risks associated with being ticketed for speeding

Introduction: This research analyzes the relationship between police-issued tickets for speeding and the crash risk of those drivers, in New Zealand, between 2015–2019. Method: The main data are constructed through data-matching license details of crash outcomes with all officer-issued tickets for speeding between 2015–2016 (N = 534,935). The sub-group of drivers that accumulate tickets is compared to a coarsened exact matched set of drivers of the same age. Results: There is a strong relationship between the number of tickets a person has in a two-year period (2015–16) and the likelihood of a crash outcome (2017–2019). However, the accumulation of tickets is not the best predictor of crash likelihood. A combination of the excess in speed and the accumulation of tickets increases the relative odds of a subsequent crash. These results are discussed considering the threshold at which New Zealand criminalizes alcohol-relating offending (notionally 4.2 times the base rate crash risk). The same rate of elevated crash risk exists when a driver has one ticket for being 10 km/h over the speed limit and has another speeding ticket within two years.