Criminals more prone to crash their motorcycles

The findings come from an examination of more than 5,000 motorcycle accidents carried out by Karolinska Institute epidemiologist Michael Fored.

He went through statistics and looked at motorcycle drivers who have a licence and then cross-referenced the names with the criminal register.

“If you’ve been convicted of a crime before, we see at least double the risk that you’ll get into a serious accident,” Fored told the TT news agency.

Among non-offenders, there are 4.1 accidents per 1,000 licence holders annually. However, that figure jumped up to 27.7 when looking at drivers with who had at least two criminal convictions.

Fored, who shared his findings at the Transportforum conference in Linköping on Thursday, also found that young drivers were more accident-prone.

“Maybe we should educate people who break the traffic laws,” he suggested.

TT/The Local/at

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