Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 經濟學系 === 97 === Driving while intoxicated (DWI) is the major cause of motor vehicle traffic accidents. In order to reduce DWI deaths and injuries, government increased the penalties for DWI since June 1999. In this study, we analysis the effectiveness of the policies in June 2001 and September 2002 to discuss the impact on probability, length of stay in hospital and medical cost of motor vehicle traffic accidents.
The data used in this study were selected from the National Health Insurance Research Database, January 2001 to May 2001 and January 2003 to May 2003. External code E810-E819 was used to identify patients of motor vehicle traffic accidents. Logistic regression model was used to analyze probability of motor vehicle traffic accidents, Poisson regression model was used to analyze the length of stay in hospital and ordinary least squares regression model was used to analyze the medical cost of motor vehicle traffic accidents before and after the traffic safety policies.
The results show that after implementation of the traffic safety policies, the number of hospitalized patients reduced by 18. The probability of motor vehicle traffic accidents reduced 0.01 percent, length of stay in hospital increased 0.99 days and medical cost increased 9,747.92 dollars. Moreover, probability and medical cost were not statistically significant different before and after the traffic safety policies. Since the number of motor vehicle traffic accidents fatalities and casualty rate decreased while patient length of stay in hospital and medical cost increased after implementation of the traffic safety policies, this indicates the effectiveness of the traffic safety policies. Nevertheless, there was no reduction in the use of medical resources which counteract the effectiveness of the traffic safety policies.
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