title: Are car drivers holding a motorcycle licence less responsible for motorcycle--car crash occurrence? A non-parametric approach.
abstract: The purpose of this work is to evaluate the effect of a specific motorcycle licence, held by car drivers, in responsibility for motorcycle-car crashes. The data were provided by a multicentric case-control study (MAIDS) regarding the risk of crash and serious injuries of motorcyclists. A non-parametric method, classification and regression tree (CART), was used to accomplish the objective, and then compared to standard unconditional logistic regression. Drivers owning a motorcycle licence turned out to be less responsible for motorcycle-car crashes than drivers who do not have one; both types of analysis are consistent with this result. It is reasonable to assume that car drivers who hold a motorcycle licence have acquired more ability in riding and controlling two wheeled vehicles than drivers without a licence, and this may help them in predicting motorcycles manoeuvres.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Health Sciences, University of Pavia, 21 Bassi Avenue, 27100 Pavia, Italy. domenico.magazzu@unipv.it
authors.forename: Domenico
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Magazzù
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Comelli
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marinoni
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001334:Automobile Driving; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003663:Decision Trees; D006801:Humans; D008004:Licensure; D016015:Logistic Models; D009049:Motorcycles / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric