Age and Speeding Behavior: A Research Proposal

Introduction and Problem Statement

This research proposal is designed to investigate the relationship between speeding in a motor vehicle and the age of the driver. There are many variables that contribute to a traffic accident, and one of them is whether any of the vehicles involved were speeding at the time (Vinluan, 2008). This proposal will not focus on accidents or tickets specifically. The goal is only to determine whether a person speeds and what that person's age is — not to examine the consequences or potential consequences of that behavior. While speeding can put the driver and others at risk, this study is not focused on outcomes; it focuses on whether the behavior occurs and in which age group it is most common. From that knowledge, further conclusions about how to reduce speeding behavior can be drawn and may prove valuable to future studies.

Past research indicates that speeding is a serious contributing factor in many traffic accidents each year (Actual, 2004; Engineering, 2014; Elvik, 2012). This is true in the United States, which is the main focus of this study, but also true in other countries (Marvel, 2010). Speeding is not a problem tied to one country, city, region, or area of the world, nor is it limited to any single group or type of person. While speeders can be found in nearly every group capable of operating a motor vehicle, some groups are more likely to contain higher numbers of speeders than others (Special, 1998; Vinluan, 2008). Past studies have shown that people in younger age groups report more speeding behavior than those in older groups (Actual, 2004; Engineering, 2014; Elvik, 2012), suggesting that the frequency of speeding tends to decline as a person ages (Engineering, 2014; Vinluan, 2008).

Whether this means a person stops speeding entirely or simply reduces its frequency is not entirely clear from prior research. There is also the consideration that some people may not consider themselves to be speeding until they are a certain number of miles per hour over the posted limit, or they may feel that speeding does not apply in specific situations — such as late at night, on a wide-open interstate, or in an emergency (Elvik, 2012). The type of driving environment also affects whether a person will speed and whether that person considers the behavior acceptable (Actual, 2004; Marvel, 2010; Vinluan, 2008). Those who justify their speeding generally cite a wide variety of reasons for doing so (Elvik, 2012).

While these justifications are interesting from a behavioral and psychological perspective, they are not relevant to this study. The goal here is not to determine why people speed or when they consider it acceptable. Instead, the focus is on the behavior itself — whether it is occurring — and how it correlates with the driver's age. Past research indicates that speeding is common and that those who speed come from a wide range of demographics (Actual, 2004; Vinluan, 2008). However, that does not mean that those who speed most often or at the greatest speeds do not fall into specific age groups (Actual, 2004; Engineering, 2014). The researcher will attempt to determine this from a random sample of individuals drawn from the community.

A number of prior studies have examined the consequences of speeding — such as accidents and tickets — in order to assess the scope of the problem (Elvik, 2012; Marvel, 2010; Vinluan, 2008). The difficulty with that approach, however, is that speeding is not the cause of all accidents, and not every person who speeds receives a ticket (Engineering, 2014; Elvik, 2012; Vinluan, 2008). As a result, undetected speeding and accidents unrelated to speed were either inadvertently included in or excluded from the data, making it much harder for researchers to accurately determine whether speeding was a true problem and how it related to the age of the vehicle operator.

The central concept of this study is relatively straightforward. The researcher intends to examine speeding as a behavior and consider the age of those who engage in it. The goal is to determine whether people who speed most typically fall into a particular age group, or whether speeding is evenly distributed across age groups — making age a non-factor. Therefore, the proposal seeks to establish a link between speeding behavior and a person's age or age group. This is a worthwhile inquiry, because identifying a particular age group responsible for a disproportionate share of speeding could inform the development of targeted educational and informational programs aimed at reducing that behavior.

Both key concepts must be clearly defined before they can be studied. Age will be examined in two ways: as a specific number assigned to an individual (e.g., age 16, age 42) and as a range (e.g., 16–19, 20–24). By addressing age in these two ways, the researcher will be able to determine both whether a particular age range is associated with greater speeding frequency and whether a particular age within a range is most commonly observed among speeders.

Speeding will be defined as exceeding the posted speed limit by more than five miles per hour. The rationale for this threshold is that one or two miles per hour over the limit introduces too many confounding variables — car speedometers are not perfectly accurate and can vary by a mile or two in either direction (Actual, 2004). However, once a driver exceeds the posted limit by five miles per hour, the behavior is intentional and unambiguous. The study's aim is not to examine the causes of speeding or its consequences, but solely to examine the behavior itself, as defined above, in relation to the age of the driver.

Conceptualization and Definitions

To measure speeding behavior, the researcher has chosen to survey participants. Age will be measured by asking each participant to provide his or her age and date of birth. The researcher will use the person's actual age as one data point and will also assign that age to a range in order to determine whether certain age brackets are associated with higher rates of speeding. The first range will cover the legal driving age of 16 through age 19. Each subsequent range will span ten years: 20–29, 30–39, and so on.

Speeding behavior will be measured by asking participants to complete a survey about their driving habits. The survey will include questions about tickets and accidents, but will also ask how often participants speed, where and when they are most likely to do so, whether they consider it illegal, and how their driving behavior has or has not changed with age. This approach allows the researcher to assess overall driving patterns and self-reported speeding frequency. Although basing speeding measures on ticket and accident records might seem more objective, many accidents do not involve speeding, and many speeders are never caught and ticketed. Relying solely on official records would therefore not accurately represent whether a given individual is a speeder.

The specific hypothesis this researcher intends to examine is:

More people between the ages of 16 and 29 speed than people in older age groups, and the number of speeders diminishes as the age of the group rises, such that people who are 16 will speed more frequently than those who are 17, and that correlation will continue through age 29, after which speeding rates will decrease more sharply.

Operationalization and Hypothesis

This hypothesis is intentionally specific, reflecting the researcher's belief that age and speeding behavior are strongly correlated, particularly among younger drivers. The researcher also believes that once a person reaches age 30, speeding and other risk-taking behaviors decline more sharply due to increased responsibility and maturity. This does not mean every individual in a given age group will conform to the pattern, but rather that a strong overall correlation between young age and greater speeding frequency will be evident in the data.

Both independent and dependent variables must be studied in order to address the hypothesis properly. They are defined as follows:

Dependent variable: speeding behavior
Independent variable: age of the motor vehicle operator

Speeding behavior is the dependent variable because it is the phenomenon being measured. The researcher wants to determine whether individuals speed, and to do so must obtain self-reported information from participants. Speeding is a choice — the driver decides whether to exceed the speed limit — and is therefore something that can vary based on other factors, including the independent variable. Age is the independent variable because it is not itself tested to see if it occurs; it is static and can only be examined to determine whether it is associated with the dependent variable. A person's age is determined by their date of birth and cannot be changed, and it is entirely independent of driving ability or behavior.

The level of analysis for both variables is micro-level, because the study focuses on individual people rather than cities, communities, or nations. Each person is considered individually; placement into an age group is a secondary analytical step. The independent variable of age is ordinal, because it can be counted and ordered but not measured in the way a behavior can be. The dependent variable of speeding behavior is nominal, because it can be assigned a label or category (speeder or non-speeder, speeding a certain number of times per week, etc.).