La perception des risques d'accident et d'arrestation lors de conduite avec facultés affaiblies

The main objective of this research is to analyze how drivers perceive their risk of being arrested for driving with impaired faculties. We also look at how people perceive their risks of being involved in an accident when driving impaired and even of being involved in an accident causing bodily injury, under the same conditions. The second objective is to identify the determinants explaining individual perceptions and, in particular, the perceptual biases held by some licensed drivers. We studied two groups of licensed drivers. The first, called the case group, was composed of individuals having had at least one suspension for impaired driving. The second, called the control group, was composed of licensed drivers having received no sanction during the period under study. Briefly stated, the principal conclusions are that: Several factors are at work in the way individuals perceive risks. The most important of these are: age, accumulation of violations in the year preceding the study, not drinking before taking the wheel, knowledge of the legal alcohol level for driving, opinion concerning zero tolerance for impaired driving, and family income. We were most surprised to note that belonging to the case group or to the control group had little impact on perceptual biases.