TY - JOUR
T1 - Social Adjustment Profiles of Fatally Injured Drivers
T2 - A Replication and Extension
AU - Shaffer, John W.
AU - Towns, Wayne
AU - Schmidt, Chester W.
AU - Fisher, Russel S.
AU - Zlotowitz, Howard I.
PY - 1974/4
Y1 - 1974/4
N2 - Two samples of fatally injured male drivers were retrospectively compared with a normative population on 18 measures of personal and social adjustment by means of the Katz Adjustment Scales, a device for assessing the behavioral characteristics of persons through interviews with knowledgeable informants. Results obtained from the first sample were essentially replicated in the second, and suggest that fatalities in male drivers, on the average, are seen by informants as having been significantly more belligerent, negative, verbally expansive, hyperactive, and displaying more psychopathology than comparable normative males. Prior existence and prominence of these traits among the cases studied was supported by Department of Motor Vehicles records indicating a high incidence of traffic violations and by excessive blood alcohol levels at autopsy in the majority. The lack of association in these samples between the behavioral traits implicated and either age or blood alcohol level at autopsy suggests the conclusion that whether young or old, drinking or nondrinking, the socially obstreperous driver is at increased risk of becoming a fatality.
AB - Two samples of fatally injured male drivers were retrospectively compared with a normative population on 18 measures of personal and social adjustment by means of the Katz Adjustment Scales, a device for assessing the behavioral characteristics of persons through interviews with knowledgeable informants. Results obtained from the first sample were essentially replicated in the second, and suggest that fatalities in male drivers, on the average, are seen by informants as having been significantly more belligerent, negative, verbally expansive, hyperactive, and displaying more psychopathology than comparable normative males. Prior existence and prominence of these traits among the cases studied was supported by Department of Motor Vehicles records indicating a high incidence of traffic violations and by excessive blood alcohol levels at autopsy in the majority. The lack of association in these samples between the behavioral traits implicated and either age or blood alcohol level at autopsy suggests the conclusion that whether young or old, drinking or nondrinking, the socially obstreperous driver is at increased risk of becoming a fatality.
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U2 - 10.1001/archpsyc.1974.01760100074012
DO - 10.1001/archpsyc.1974.01760100074012
M3 - Article
C2 - 4815557
AN - SCOPUS:0016186784
SN - 0003-990X
VL - 30
SP - 508
EP - 511
JO - Archives of general psychiatry
JF - Archives of general psychiatry
IS - 4
ER -