In legislative news this week, a new Canadian study from Western University found that stricter legal statutes and regulations deter young male drivers from driving rashly, effectively reducing the number of fatal accidents and injuries suffered.
Researchers examined the effects of driving laws that were put into effect back in 2007 and analyzed nine years worth of data from the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario. According to the researchers’ legislative history research and analysis, the “Ontario’s Street Racers, Stunt, and Aggressive Drivers Legislation” successfully reduced the average amount of accidents per month by 58 for males between ages 16 and 24.
According to the legislative news story, the law punishes speeding drivers by impounding their vehicles for a week, suspending their licenses for as long as two years, and fining them between $2,000 to $10,000. Legislative research also reveals that the penalties increase in severity for each subsequent offense.
The legislative news was reported in both the Traffic Injury Prevention journal and the Accident Analysis and Prevention journal.
While this is indeed good news, an older, a similar study found that tickets were a less effective means of curbing the amount of speeding motorists. The study found that drivers who were ticketed stood an increased risk of receiving even more citations, which suggests that speeding citations aren’t effective deterrents.
The difference between the studies, though, is the extent of the penalties. The first reported piece of legislative news held larger penalties over drivers’ heads, while drivers faced smaller punishments in the second piece of legislative news.
What this all means is that if a government–local, state, federal–wants to curb the amount of accidents as a result of speeding, then it needs to punish the action move heavily.
Hopefully, governments will take notice of the study and begin imposing larger penalties on speeding. Perhaps then there will be a more significant decrease in injuries and fatalities suffered as a result of speeding.
