Traffic tickets prevent crashes, says report

By: Drivers.com staff
Date: Wednesday, 13. June 2007

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Accident investigation detective Ken Gonyea, of the Long Beach Police Department, believes that traffic tickets reduce crashes and save lives. That's long been his opinion, but now he has evidence to back him up.

In an article published in The Lancet medical journal on June 20, Robert Tibshirani of the Stanford University School of Medicine reported on a study of drivers in Ontario, Canada which indicated that tickets do reduce crashes and save lives. Tibshirani's research indicated that one life is saved for every 80,000 tickets, and one emergency department visit for every 1,300 tickets.

Tibshirani's research looked at the driving records of drivers who had been ticketed and found that receiving a traffic ticket reduces a driver's risk of dying in an accident by 35 percent in the weeks after receiving the ticket. "Getting a ticket stays on your mind," said Tibshirani. "If you know you deserved the ticket it may remind you to slow down." He urges that more traffic tickets be issued.

Detective Gonyea would heartily agree. When people find out he's a police officer, he says, they will often tell him about tickets they've received. And they seem to be able to remember details about their traffic citations for many years, says Gonyea, so he's always been a firm believer in their effectiveness.

Note: Robert Tibshirai was one of the authors of a well known study of cell phones and crashes which indicated that cell phone use greatly increased the risk of a crash. Read our article.

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