Multilevel modelling for the regional effect of enforcement on road accidents

This paper investigates the effect of the intensification of Police enforcement on the number of road accidents at national and regional level in Greece, focusing on one of the most important road safety violations: drinking-and-driving. Multilevel negative binomial models are developed to describe the effect of the intensification of alcohol enforcement on the reduction of road accidents in different regions of Greece. Moreover, two approaches are explored as far as regional clustering is concerned: the first one concerns an ad hoc geographical clustering and the second one is based on the results of mathematical cluster analysis through demographic, transport and road safety characteristics. Results indicate that there are significant spatial dependences among road accidents and enforcement. Additionally, it is shown that these dependences are more efficiently interpreted when regions are determined on the basis of qualitative similarities than on the basis of geographical adjacency.