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Acculturation and risk of traffic crashes in young Asian-born Australian drivers
  1. Soufiane Boufous1,
  2. Holger Möller2,3,
  3. George Patton4,5,
  4. Mark Woodward6,
  5. Mark R Stevenson7,
  6. Teresa Senserrick8,
  7. Rebecca Mclean9,
  8. Patricia Cullen10,
  9. Amy Wang10,
  10. Kris Rogers11,
  11. Huei-Yang Chen12,
  12. Rebecca Q Ivers10
  1. 1 Transport and Road Safety Research, School of Aviation, Faculty of Science, University of New South Wales - Kensington Campus, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  2. 2 School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  3. 3 The George Institute for Global Health, University of New South Wales, Newtown, NSW, Australia
  4. 4 Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  5. 5 Centre for Adolescent Health, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
  6. 6 School of Public Health, The George Institute for Global Health, Imperial College London Faculty of Medicine, London, UK
  7. 7 Melbourne School of Design | Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning Melbourne School of Population and Global Health | Melbourne School of Engineering, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  8. 8 Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  9. 9 Department of Population Health, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
  10. 10 School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  11. 11 Graduate School of Health and School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, New South Wales, Australia
  12. 12 NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Soufiane Boufous, Transport and Road Safety Research, School of Aviation, Faculty of Science., University of New South Wales - Kensington Campus, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; soufiane{at}unsw.edu.au

Abstract

The study examines changes over time in crash risk differences between young Australian drivers born in Asia and those born in Australia.

Data from the 2003 baseline survey of the DRIVE cohort of 20 806 young drivers aged 17–24 years were linked to police, hospital and death data up until 2016. The association between country of birth and crash was investigated using flexible parametric survival models adjusted for confounders.

Six months after baseline, the crash risk in Asian-born drivers was less than half that of their Australian-born counterparts (mean HR, MHR 0.41; 95% CI 0.29 to 0.57), only to increase steadily over time to resemble that of Australian-born drivers 13 years later (MHR 0.94; 95% CI 0.66 to 1.36).

This is likely to be associated with acculturation and the adoption by young Asian-born Australian drivers of driving behaviour patterns akin to those born locally. This needs to be considered in future road safety campaigns.

  • motor vehicle � occupant
  • youth
  • risk factor research

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Footnotes

  • Twitter @rebeccaivers

  • Contributors All authors contributed to the conceptualisation and design of the study. RQI, SB, MRS, MW and TS contributed to the design of the original DRIVE cohort study. PC and KR contributed to the relinkage of the DRIVE cohort. KR cleaned the linked data. HM led the analysis and SB led the draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the findings and revision of the manuscript.

  • Funding This work was supported by the National Roads and Motorists’ Association (NRMA)-Australian Capital Territory Road Safety Trust (Grant number: N/A). RQI is funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellowship (Grant ID: APP1136430) and Patricia Cullen by a NHMRC Early Career Fellowship (Grant ID: APP1158223). RQI and PC are affiliated with the Centre of Research Excellence: Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health funded by the NHMRC (Grant ID: APP1171981), and also with the Wellbeing Health & Youth Centre of Research Excellence in Adolescent Health funded by the NHMRC (Grant ID: APP1134894).

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.