Critique: Immigrant Drivers Are Safer

What a load of horse manure is this?! According to research from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre's Dr. Donald Redelmeier, new immigrants get into fewer major accidents than long-term residents.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110706/imigrant-drivers-safe-110706/

Unfortunately, I haven't found the actual study and have only been able to read the articles from various news media sites. According to his statement in the CTV article, "So we're not looking at violations of (driving) etiquette, we're looking at serious crashes that end you up in the emergency department and hospitalized."

This does NOT mean that new immigrant drivers are safer! He said himself that they weren't looking for violations of etiquette, which means they could very well likely have been the cause of somebody else's crash! The article continues to read:

"The study, published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, found immigrant drivers' comparative risk of being in a nasty collision was lowest in the initial years following arrival, but still persisted beyond the fifth and sixth years of the eight years each person was tracked"

My reasons after the jump

First of all, this can be said for the majority of drivers. When you first get a driver's license, you tend to be less comfortable with the road. You don't drive as much. You don't drive as far. You're more cautious, the concepts from driving school are still fresh in your mind. Amongst new drivers, it's possible that new immigrants are more conscientious about their driving habits. Immigrants come in all ages, whereas getting your driver's license is a rite of passage for many teenagers. Adults, with the wisdom that is supposed to come with age, are likely going to understand and adhere to the rules in comparison to some teenagers who think that the rules should apply to everyone else but them.

But the report also fails to take into consideration the general tendency of ghettoization of new immigrants. That's not to say that new immigrants live in slums, but they tend to stay within their own communities. In the case of Toronto, you'll find very few new chinese immigrants, for example, moving to say, Liberty Village. That's not to say that there are none there, but there is a tendency to live within striking distance of their own communities.
For many of them, there is also a language barrier that prevents them from venturing very far out from those same communities. Which means, there will also be a tendency to work within the community. So if you live in that community and work in that community, there is less opportunity to drive outside of the confines of that community.

When you spend the majority of your time driving in areas that have a posted speed limit of 60km/h or less, there is also then, less of a likelihood of you getting into a major automobile collision. And any time you're leaving your comfort zone, you are likely going to be more cautious. Because you aren't familiar with the roads, you're also more likely going to drive slower. These things don't account for people being better drivers!

Granted. Not all new immigrants stay within their cultural neighbourhoods. Many of them work outside of that comfort zone. Take away those who use public transportation to commute to work. If they work regular work hours, the chances of them being involved in a major vehicular collision also isn't very high. The opportunity for someone to accelerate to a rate of speed where the trauma centre is involved, is fairly low.

Without looking at actual numbers for the Toronto area, outside of a major weather situation, major vehicular collisions are likely to occur on major arteries during off peak driving hours. Evenings, weekends, and earlier in the morning before gridlock.

This investigation using only major vehicular collisions is flawed on so many levels, not taking into account too many vital parameters.

~Cheers.