An econometric analysis of the effects of the penalty points system driver's license in Spain

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Abstract

This article seeks to quantify the effects of the penalty points system driver's license during the 18-month period following its coming into force. This is achieved by means of univariate and multivariate unobserved component models set up in a state space framework estimated using maximum likelihood. A detailed intervention analysis is carried out in order to test for the effects and their duration of the introduction of the penalty points system driver's license in Spain. Other variables, mainly indicators of the level of economic activity in Spain, are also considered. Among the main effects, we can mention an average reduction of almost 12.6% in the number of deaths in highway accidents. It would take at least 2 years for that effect to disappear. For the rest of the safety indicator variables (vehicle occupants injured in highway accidents and vehicle occupants injured in accidents built-up areas) the effects disappeared 1 year after the law coming into force.

Introduction

Over recent decades, road accidents have become one of the main causes of fatalities and morbidity, both on an international level and in some Mediterranean countries, including Spain (Page, 2001, Gras et al., 2007, Nasrullah et al., 2008). In terms of risk indicators (OECD, IRTAD, 2009), 3823 people died on Spanish roads in 2007, which is equivalent to 8.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. According to the same source, Spain is on a par with Italy, behind Portugal (9.2), Belgium (10.1) and Greece (14.9), but a long way in front of European leaders such as the Netherlands (4.3), Great Britain (5.0) and France (7.5). The ratio of road user fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles in Spain for the same year was thirteen, which is lower than that of other countries in Europe such as Greece (24) and Portugal (18); but significantly higher than the nine in France and Germany.

The higher accident rate on roads in Spain during the 1980s compared to its neighbors and other countries with similar rates of vehicle ownership is a widely studied topic in the academic literature. Frequent analyses are made of Spanish road traffic series, either treated individually using a variety of techniques (García-Ferrer et al., 2007) or compared to those of other countries (Lassarre, 2001, Page, 2001). Studies on more specific aspects are also prevalent, such as on the incidence of accidents in certain types of vehicles (see Arenas et al., 2009); accidents that have occurred with drivers under the influence of psychoactive substances such as illicit or medicinal drugs (Carpenter, 2004); seatbelt use (Gras et al., 2007); or the attitude of some groups of potentially high risk drivers as far as road accidents are concerned, such as young people (Ramos et al., 2008).

The huge economic and social cost of deaths, disabilities and injuries, has been estimated by López Bastida et al. (2004) at 1.35% of Spain's Gross National Product. With a view to minimizing this economic problem of primary importance (Peden et al., 2004), Spanish governments have implemented a range of preventive and corrective strategies, especially after the 2005–2008 Road Safety Strategic Plan was passed. The major road safety policies that have been devised are OECD (2008): the creation of the National Road Safety Observatory, the introduction of surveillance devices with greater monitoring of speeding and alcohol or drugs use, obligatory seatbelt use, obligatory crash helmet use for motorcycle drivers, infrastructure improvement programs, waves of shock campaigns in the media and the enforcement of offenses through legal reforms of the penalties envisaged and the implementation of a penalty points system driver's license.1

Recent studies all point toward the human component as the explanatory factor in most accidents (Stanton and Salmon, 2009, Medina et al., 2004). Consequently, of all these initiatives, penalty points systems (PPS) are particularly recommended by a number of institutions involved in road safety (see Global Road Safety Partnership, 2008 on an international level, and RACC, 2007 in Spain) to modify and penalize repeated inappropriate behavior behind the wheel2.

Spain was one of the last countries in the European Union to implement the PPS.3 Passed by Law 17/2005 of July 19, 2005, use of the system came into force on July 1, 2006. With its application the DGT aimed, on the one hand, to ensure compliance with the goal set by the European Commission for 2001–2010 of a 50% reduction in the number of deaths in road accidents (European Commission, 2002), and, naturally, on the other hand, to reduce the traditionally high road accident rates recorded in Spain (DGT, 2008).

In general terms, the PPS is a system through which road safety authorities assign a point to every driver who commits a traffic violation. The point is either positive or negative depending on the country and how serious the offense is. Thus, when the total number of points added or subtracted reaches the permitted limit, the driver's license is suspended or revoked. Systems based on the accumulation of points (demerit points system: DPS) are applied in Japan and in non-European Anglo-Saxon countries (several US states, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), and in the north of Europe (United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and Germany), for instance, while in the south of Europe (in France and Italy, for example) it is more frequent to subtract points from the initial credit issued to every driver.

The Spanish PPS issues an initial number of points (generally 12) that are progressively used up as violations are committed.4 The system defines three groups of drivers: professional drivers, novice drivers (with licenses or permits under 3 years old) and all remaining drivers. Points are subtracted from the individual's administrative driving license, not from the type of permit or license for the vehicle that he/she is driving at the time the violation is committed. In addition, there is a bonus of a maximum of five points for drivers who have never been penalized for serious or very serious offenses. Drivers who exhaust their credit are obliged to attend a rehabilitation and re-education course.

Table 1 shows the most recent PPS effectiveness analyses for different countries based on a variety of techniques and the main conclusions.

As Nolén and Östlin (2008) stated, there is at least one study for every country where the PPS has been implemented. Nevertheless, there are some question marks regarding the assessment of the effects of these systems. On the one hand, from a methodological perspective, these studies are frequently based on a comparative analysis of statistical series, as Table 1 shows. In the opinion of Mohammed and Labuschagne (2008), very little is known of the effects of the PPS on road safety, because it is difficult to assess these systems. On the other hand, there is no consensus in the literature on the duration of the positive impact of the PPS (see Montoro and Roca, 2007 vs. Farchi et al., 2007, for example).5

In the case of Spain, preliminary literature shows that the PPS has been welcomed by public opinion6 (Montoro and Roca, 2007, Lijarcio et al., 2008, Montoro et al., 2008, Ramos et al., 2008). Moreover, a 14.6% reduction in mortality from road accidents is usually attributed to the PPS (RACC, 2007, DGT, 2007) by a simple statistical comparison, even though the same sources confirm that the reduction was most evident between July 2006 and January 2007, with a decline in the effect of the system being noted after that date. Nevertheless, according to Roca and Tortosa (2008), the majority of these studies have only considered the way that the number of accidents and/or victims has evolved without any methodological support and without isolating the influence of other relevant factors, which is what this article aims to do.

This article goes beyond a simple descriptive view of the introduction of the PPS driver's license in Spain. We use an econometric model to estimate the quantitative impact of this reform on the main safety indicators for road accidents in Spain. The model is based on unobserved component models with added linear transfer function effects to model relationships with explanatory variables. There are several recent transportation studies that use similar approaches, either in motor vehicle accident analysis (see e.g., García-Ferrer et al., 2007) or port governance (see Castillo-Manzano et al., 2008, Castillo-Manzano et al., 2009). Compared to alternative approaches, our approach presents at least three major features. Firstly, it allows us to carry out a dynamic analysis that exploits the time series structure of the series of accidents on highways and in built-up areas (versus alternative studies that follow a comparative static approach). Secondly, we take an agnostic approach insofar as we do not need to make any assumptions regarding the nature of the different components in the series.

Finally, to avoid spurious or confusing effects that might blur the impact of the PPS (see Engström et al., 2003), we can easily control for variables that might have influenced Spanish traffic accidents in the time period analyzed, such as the level of economic activity, the rate of vehicle utilization and other specific events, including general bad weather conditions or strikes by truck drivers and other variables that are explained in the following data section. The use of multivariate models allows us to estimate the log-term effect of the June 1992 legal change that made seatbelt use mandatory, for example.

In short, the goal of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of the PPS in Spain and the way its effects have developed over time. We therefore analyze if the effects only exist in the very short term (Farchi et al., 2007), or whether is it possible for the effects to last more than 6 months, as stated in other studies (see Montoro and Roca, 2007, Zambon et al., 2008). In other words, the purpose of this analysis is to discover whether the application of the penalty points system license does really represent a turning point in the history of Spanish road safety.

This article is organized as follows. Section 2 sets out the data, Section 3 establishes the methodology used, Section 4 presents the empirical results and, finally, Section 5 presents the conclusions of the study.

Section snippets

The data

The data used to measure the effects of the PPS in Spain can be divided into three groups:

  • 1.

    Safety indicator variables: There are four monthly variables relating to accident rates, namely the number of deaths in highway accidents, deaths in accidents in built-up areas, vehicle occupants injured in highway accidents, and vehicle occupants injured in accidents built-up areas. In order to use consistent time series for as long as possible, we used the definition of death as occurring within 24 h of

General methodology

The basic model is of the unobserved component model class known as the Basic Structural Model (Harvey, 1989), which decomposes a set of time series into unobserved but meaningful components from an economic point of view (mainly trend, seasonal, and irregular). The model has to be multivariate and may be written as in Eq. (1):zt=Tt+St+f(It)+vtzt, Tt, St and vt denote the m dimensional output time series and trend, seasonal and irregular components, respectively. f(It) measures the effects of

Models and results

Two types of model were developed within the previous framework: (1) univariate models with a single output and a set of dummy variables to take into account all the relevant events on which the univariate time series may depend (zt is just one of the safety indicators); and (2) multivariate models that are an expanded version of their univariate counterparts, in which IPI and gasoline consumption are also included (i.e. zt is one of the safety indicators, IPI and gasoline consumption). All

Conclusions

The question of the possible positive effects of the introduction of penalty points system driver's licenses (in its two varieties: PPS and DPS) is a topic that has generated a notable amount of academic literature in recent years. After conducting a survey of the main results obtained, this work focuses on the case of Spain. The coming into force of the PPS in the summer of 2006 represented the latest attempt on the part of the Spanish government to put an end to Spain's status as one of the

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