Road users’ socio-economic status and road safety in Denmark

The goal of this study is to investigate if there specific socio-economic groups in Denmark which are at increased risk to be involved in road accidents. All Danish residents in year 2000 older than 15 years (4,297,373) were considered. Age, gender, income, education, origin and criminal history were chosen to represent the subjects’ demographic and socio-economic characteristics, while involvement in road accidents during the study period was used to represent his/her accident risk. The accident risk (in terms of odds ratio, O.R. and number of accidents a person was involved in) was evaluated by logistic and Poisson regression. The highest odds for being involved in road accident were found among individuals with a criminal record: O.R.=3.9 (95% CI 3.6-4.2) for persons who committed only non-traffic law violations and O.R.=13.3 (95% CI 11.7-15.1) for people with both traffic and other laws violations as compared to the non-criminal group. Young age and being a male were also associated with higher odds to be involved in an accident, while the odds decreased with increasing of the education level. The origin of the person was found not to be significant. A decreasing of the average age with increasing of the number of accident a person was involved in was observed. The paper discusses the need of specific road safety interventions targeting high risk groups.