Identifying the influences of demographic characteristics and personality of inveterate drunk drivers on the likelihood of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUIA) recurrence

ABSTRACT

Driving under the influence of alcohol (DUIA) is one of the main factors that cause severe traffic crashes and is considered a grave offence under the law. As shown by existing research and statistics, one of the characteristics associated with DUIA is that DUIA offenders are more likely to be rearrested for DUIA conviction. This means that in order to eradicate DUIA, the personal, psychological, and socio-cultural characteristics of habitual drunk drivers should be examined and intensive efforts are required to manage these types of offenders. This study aims to identify how the personality traits of DUIA recidivists influence the likelihood of DUIA recurrence on urban roads. The personalities of the drivers were divided into four dimensions – psychoticism, extroversion, neuroticism, and lie – based on the Korean version of the Eysenck personality test. Four additional attributes related to drivers’ information were included: gender, blood alcohol concentration (BAC), drinking frequency, and educational background. From the analysis results, six variables were found to be significant and five variables except for educational background had a positive correlation with the possibility of DUIA recurrence. Regarding drivers’ personality traits, drivers with a higher psychoticism (P) and lie (L) had a 118% and 102% higher possibility of DUIA recurrence, respectively. The results of this study are expected to contribute to a reduction in DUIA-related traffic accidents by preventing DUIA recidivism through follow-up management such as a continuous monitoring for drivers with a higher propensity for DUIA recurrence and by establishing regulations that can administer strong punishments for DUIA recidivists.

KEYWORDS:

• Driving under the influence of alcohol (DUIA)
• personality
• recidivism
• K-EPQ
• traffic crashes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Subtracting 1 from the odds ratio and multiplying by 100 ((odds ratio-1)×100) gives the percent change in the probability of the event’s occurring with a unit change in the independent variable.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the 2015 Research Fund of the University of Seoul.