Novice drink drivers, recidivism and crash involvement

A group of drink drivers with no prior arrest for drink driving was selecte d from drink driving arrest records originating in Western Australia betwee n 1987 and 1995. These drink-driving records were linked to road crash reco rds for the same period. The analysis of these combined records focussed on the sequence of driving events (i.e., arrests, crashes and arrests resulti ng from crashes) and the present article explores the relationship in time between known drink driving incidents and crash involvement. Using multi-va riate survival analysis, it was found that if a driver's first drink drivin g offence resulted from a road crash, especially if this occurred at a youn ger age, he/she was significantly more likely to drink, drive and crash aga in. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.