Personality and accident liability: are extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism related to traffic and occupational fatalities?

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism, and road traffic fatalities in a data set of 34 nations. In addition to traffic fatalities per 100,000 vehicles, work-related fatalities were included in the study. Results showed that extraversion had a positive relation to the number of traffic fatalities whereas neuroticism correlated negatively with road fatalities. Occupational fatalities were strongly related to deaths on the roads but not to personality dimensions, Countries with high extraversion scores had more traffic fatalities than countries with moderate or low extraversion scores. The need for well-designed studies investigating the link between personality factors and traffic accident liability via driver behaviour was expressed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.