Abstract:
The effects of age and experience on accident involvement for bus drivers were
investigated, with special emphasis upon the first years of being an operator,
using two methods. First, direct calculations between these variables were
undertaken. Thereafter, a variant of the method of quasi-induced exposure (a
ratio of culpable versus nonculpable accidents in the population) was used and
referred to as the indirect method. These methods yielded fairly similar
results, given that the samples used were drawn from the same population but
only partly overlapping. It was found that experience had the strongest effect
on accidents in the first year of driving, while age had a u-shaped association
with accidents, that is, young and old drivers had more accidents, something
that was more apparent when experience was held constant. These results show
that, for bus drivers, experience is initially more important than age, but
after two or three years, the effect is small. Thereafter, age is the more
discernible variable, although it is a very weak factor in predicting crash
risk.
