Investigation and statistical analysis on the deterrence effect of police patrol

Abstract

This study investigated the deterrence effect of the police patrol on the road safety in China. A questionnaire survey was carried out to investigate the drivers’ illegal behaviour and attitudes to these safety measures such as police patrol, surveillance cameras and warning signs. 137 drivers participated in the survey. The results showed that 45.3%, 4.4% and 16.8% of the respondents admitted that they had the experience of speeding, driving under influencing of alcohol and fatigued driving respectively; all of the participants believed that traffic police patrol would change their dangerous driving behaviours and police patrol is most effective among three road safety measures based on the investigations. Data about police patrol frequency and road crash rate on the road segment was collected from the local Transportation Administration Bureau and the regression analysis based on the data was conducted to investigate the direct effect of traffic police patrol on road safety improvement. The results indicated that increasing the frequency of police patrol has an obvious positive effect on improving the road safety and it is consistent with the results from self-reported questionnaire survey.