Traffic Accidents: The Contrasting Roles of Life Satisfaction and Anxiety

It is well established that people with low subjective wellbeing have heightened traffic accident risk. However, the roles of particular mental states, including overall evaluative subjective wellbeing and specific forms of mental distress such as depression or anxiety, have not hitherto been disentangled. Using an official representative population survey, we show that different forms of mental distress are associated with single versus multiple accident prevalence within a year. Anxiety (a lack of calmness) is strongly associated with having an accident. By contrast, conditional on having had at least one accident, overall life satisfaction is more strongly associated with having multiple accidents than are anxiety, depression or overall mental health. The relationship is n-shaped so that people with moderately low wellbeing have the highest multiple accident probability. These results are robust to the exclusion of respondents for whom reverse causality may be present and to the inclusion of variables representing other risky behaviours and representing social isolation. The findings imply that specific forms of intervention are likely to be needed to reduce accidents for people with moderately low subjective wellbeing who may engage in habitual risky behaviours that result in multiple accidents.