Evaluation of the Traffic Safety Risk of Bioptic Telescopic Lens Drivers

摘要

The report compares the 2-year accident and citation rates for 609 drivers whomust wear a bioptic telescopic lens (BTL) device when driving with those for a randomly selected comparison group of 28,109 drivers. The criterion measures were statistically adjusted using age and gender as covariates. The results indicate that the adjusted total and fatal/injury accident rates for the BTL group were 1.9 and 1.7 times higher, respectively, than those for the comparison group. However, an opposite result was found for total citations; the adjusted rate for the BTL group was 0.7 of the adjusted rate for the comparison group on this measure. All of the differences were statistically significant. The differences in the adjusted means were even greater when only drivers with valid licenses were considered. These findings suggest that BTL drivers do not sufficiently compensate for their higher-risk status. The study also found that the department's policy of restricting BTL drivers from driving at night was followed by only 35% of the BTL subjects. The department is in the process of correcting this operational deficiency.