TY - JOUR T1 - Impact of graduated driver licensing restrictions on crashes involving young drivers in New Zealand JF - Injury Prevention JO - Inj Prev SP - 292 LP - 296 DO - 10.1136/ip.7.4.292 VL - 7 IS - 4 AU - D J Begg AU - S Stephenson AU - J Alsop AU - J Langley Y1 - 2001/12/01 UR - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/7/4/292.abstract N2 - Objective—To determine the impact on young driver crashes of the three main driving restrictions in the New Zealand graduated driver licensing (GDL) system: night-time curfew, no carrying of young passengers, and a blood alcohol limit of 30 mg/100 ml. Method—The database for this study was created by linking police crash reports to hospital inpatient records (1980–95). Multivariate logistic regression was used to compare car crashes involving a young driver licensed before GDL (n=2252) with those who held a restricted graduated licence (n=980) and with those who held a full graduated licence (n=1273), for each of the main driving restrictions. Results—Compared with the pre-GDL group, the restricted licence drivers had fewer crashes at night (p=0.003), fewer involving passengers of all ages (p=0.018), and fewer where alcohol was suspected (p=0.034), but not fewer involving young casualties (p=0.980). Compared with the pre-GDL drivers, those with the full graduated licence had fewer night crashes (p=0.042) but did not differ significantly for any of the other factors examined. Conclusion—These results suggest that some of the GDL restrictions, especially the night-time curfew, have contributed to a reduction in serious crashes involving young drivers. ER -