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Criminals more prone to crash their motorcycles

Published: 10 Jan 13 13:30 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/45540/20130110/

Motorcycle drivers who have a criminal record are twice as likely to get into accidents on the road than their law-abiding peers, a new Swedish study has found.

The findings come from an examination of more than 5,000 motorcycle accidents carried out by Karolinska Institute epidemiologist Michael Fored.

He went through statistics and looked at motorcycle drivers who have a licence and then cross-referenced the names with the criminal register.

"If you've been convicted of a crime before, we see at least double the risk that you'll get into a serious accident," Fored told the TT news agency.

Among non-offenders, there are 4.1 accidents per 1,000 licence holders annually. However, that figure jumped up to 27.7 when looking at drivers with who had at least two criminal convictions.

Fored, who shared his findings at the Transportforum conference in Linköping on Thursday, also found that young drivers were more accident-prone.

"Maybe we should educate people who break the traffic laws," he suggested.

TT/The Local/at
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15:55 January 10, 2013 by millionmileman
Could it be that criminals have attention deficit disorder that could make the resent authority causing then to run into trouble and hence not pay as much to driving properly?
21:15 January 10, 2013 by johan rebel
Is anybody surpirised?

However, these criminals are only half as likely to be involved in a traffic accident as immigrants from the Middle East, who are involved in accidents four times as often as real Swedes. I'm not making this up, the stats can be found here:

http://www.sydsvenskan.se/sverige/utlandsfodd-lever-farligt-i-trafiken/

So next time you hit the the road, don't ask yourself whether the driver of that oncoming speeding vehicle has a criminal record, rather worry about where he's from (hopefully it will be a he, as the women are even more accident prone)
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