| dc.description.abstract | The high rate of accidents among young novice motorcyclists in Taiwan has long been a major traffic issue. In response, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) implemented numerous reforms in motorcycle licensing, such as extending road traffic safety training hours in December 2018 to lower accident rates in this group. This study aims to assess the impact of these policies on novice motorcyclists aged 18 to 20, focusing on the 11 months before and one year after its implementation, and identifying scenarios where they are more prone to accidents. This research utilizes driver registration data from the Highway Bureau, MOTC and class A1, A2 road traffic accident reports from the National Police Agency. Logistic and negative binomial regression models were applied to analyze accident involvement probabilities and frequencies.
Results indicate a significant decrease in accident involvement for 19-year-old riders in their first year of licensing under night-time, rain, slippery roads, and poor visibility conditions, with reductions of 0.78%, 0.5%, 0.58%, and 0.87%, respectively, and corresponding IRRs of 0.7486, 0.5885, 0.5979, and 0.8508. Conversely, 18-year-old riders in their second year of licensing showed increased accident probabilities under a broader range of conditions, including rain, slippery roads, intersections without signals, flashing signal intersections, and poor visibility, with increases of 0.28%, 0.21%, 0.54%, 0.58%, and 0.71%, and corresponding IRRs of 1.3321, 1.1777, 1.0843, 1.0994, and 1.1071. In sum, while extending training hours can pose significant effects in some cases, its impact is non-uniform across all age groups and types of accidents, thus calling for broadening this policy with the introduction of a pass-fail grading system and more case studies to help facilitate the effective learning of novice riders. | en_US |