Association of personality and psychology with accident proneness among drivers

Objective To study the association of personality and psychology with accident proneness among motor vehicle drivers and to provide scientific evidences to reduce road traffic injury.Methods A 1∶1 matched case-control study was applied to this study and 60 pairs of motor vehicle drivers (60 with the history of liability road traffic accidents of ≥3 times during January 2008 to December 2012 as the cases and 60 without history of road traffic accidents during the same period as the controls)from Nanning,Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region accomplished Eysenck Personality Questionnaire(EPQ)and Symptom Checklist-90(SCL-90).Results The scores of extroversion(E,14.53±2.89),psycholepsy(P,6.45±2.59),neuroticism(N,9.88±4.31),mobilization(1.54±0.27),obsession(1.72±0.20),anxiety(1.71±0.40),hostile(1.62±0.37),and terror(1.39±0.39)were significantly higher in the case group than in the control group(P<0.05 for all).The scores of E(14.12±3.19),mobilization(1.59±0.22),obsession(1.72±0.21),anxiety(1.77±0.37),and hostile(1.62±0.33)for the drivers with driving experience of ≤15 years in the case group were higher than those of the control group(P<0.05 for all).The scores of E(14.24±3.00),P(7.10±2.86),mobilization(1.58±0.25),obsession(1.73±0.25),anxiety(1.79±0.35),and hostile(1.61±0.34)of the drivers with junior middle school education in the case group were higher than those in the control group(P<0.05 for all).Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that extroversion(odds ratioOR=1.41),hostile(OR=5.39),and terror(OR=5.42)were risk factors for accident proneness.Conclusion The driver accident proneness is related to the personality and psychology of the driver.Extroversion,hostile and terror were risk factors for accident proneness.