!!Экзамен зачет 2023 год / Tort liability versus other approaches

(Cite as: 14 Int'l Rev. L. & Econ. 53)

VAN HOUTEN, R., P. NAU, AND B. JONAH, "Effects of Feedback on Impaired Driving," in Kaye, S. and G.W. Meier (eds.), Conference on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety--San Juan, Puerto Rico 1983. U.S. Department of Transportation, DOT HS 806 814 (September 1985):1375-1394.

WHITE, MICHELLE J., "An Empirical Test of the Comparative and Contributory Negligence Rules in Accident Law," Rand Journal of Economics 20 (1989):308-330.

WILKINSON, JAMES T., "Reducing Drunken Driving: Which Policies are Most Effective?," Southern Economic Journal 54 (1987):322-334.

WITTMAN, DONALD, "The Price of Negligence Under Differing Liability Rules," Journal of Law and Economics 29 (1986):151-163.

WOODS, HENRY, Comparative Fault: The Negligence Case (Rochester, NY: Lawyers Co-operative Publishing, 1978).

WOODS, HENRY, Comparative Fault (Rochester, NY: Lawyers Co-operative Publishing, 1987).

ZADOR, PAUL AND ADRIAN LUND, "Re-Analysis of the Effects of No-Fault Auto Insurance on Fatal Crashes," Journal of Risk and Insurance 53 (1986):226-241.

ZLATOPER, THOMAS J., "Models Explaining Motor Vehicle Death Rates in the United States," Accident Analysis and Prevention 21 (1989):125-154.

[FNa1]. This research was supported in part by grant no. 5 R01AA-08354, "Heavy Drinking and Drunk Driving: Which Deterrents Work?" made to Vanderbilt University from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. We thank Penny B. Githens, formerly at Vanderbilt, for her significant contribution in compiling data for this study, Frank Chaloupka for providing data on some of the explanatory variables, and Christopher Conover, Duke University, for his comments on an earlier draft. We appreciate comments made by reviewers on a previous version of this study.

[FN1] On the high cost of compensating victims by means of tort liability, see Kakalik and Pace (1986).

[FN2] Exceptions include Chaloupka et al. (1993), Devlin (1990), Gaudry (1988), Kochanowski and Young (1985), Landes (1982), Wilkinson (1987), and Zador and Lund (1986). Also see reviews by Bruce (1984) and Friedland et al. (1990).

[FN3] See Asch and Levy (1987), Chaloupka et al. (1993), Cook and Tauchen (1984), Males (1986), and Saffer and Grossman (1987a, 1987b) for empirical analysis of minimum drinking age laws' effects. Manning et al. (1991) summarize previous empirical research on price of alcohol on consumption.

[FN4] See O'Donnell's (1985) review of 11 studies on on-premise alcohol consumption and subsequent arrests for DUI and drivers involved in alcohol-related crashes. Other studies of departing clientele have documented that many patrons have elevated blood alcohol content on leaving bars and are impaired as drivers (Meier et al., 1984; Russ and Geller, 1987; Van Houten et al., 1985; and unpublished sources listed in McKnight, 1991).

[FN5] Many of these laws were imposed in the 1980s. In 1991, 35 states had dram shop statutes; another four states and the District of Columbia recognized some form of dram shop liability as a matter of common law made by a decision of the state's highest court. In the rest, either there was no dram shop liability or such liability had not been imposed statewide (Mosher, 1987; U.S. Department of Transportation, 1991). If imposed for only part of the state, we treated the state as not having a dram shop law.

[FN6] See Friedland et al. (1990), p. 74.

[FN7] Beard (1990) showed conditions under which this relationship between wealth and care choice does not

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(Cite as: 14 Int'l Rev. L. & Econ. 53)

hold.

[FN8] Insurers are (1) more efficient than individuals in diversifying away risk and (2) are specialists in defending claims. Whether or not they are efficient monitors of insureds' safety behavior is much more controversial.

[FN9] The required liability limits tend to be low, 25/50/25 or less in 1991 (American Insurance Association, 1991).

[FN10] Premium levels may also affect the mix of drivers. For example, high premiums may delay the time at which young persons begin to drive. See Grayston (1973).

[FN11] Varying required liability limits on compulsory insurance may have no effect on drivers' precautions if lawyers rarely pursue damages above even modest liability limits. If so, without experience rating, varying liability limits should have no effect on driver behavior. However, with experience rating, the surcharge for manifestations of careless driving is logically greater with higher limits, and the higher surcharge should have a deterrent effect.

[FN12] See Kochanowski and Young (1985), Zador and Lund (1986), and Wilkinson (1987).

[FN13] See Brown (1985), Devlin (1990), Gaudry (1988), and the review of these studies by Friedland et al. (1990), pp. 69-73. Joost (1992, Chapter 7) provides a description of pure no-fault laws in Israel, Quebec, New Zealand, and Sweden.

[FN14] By contrast, Cooter and Ulen (1988) asserted that "the actual implementation of the slight-gross system is very much like that under either form of modified comparative negligence" (p. 400).

[FN15] See, e.g., Shavell (1987), p. 39.

[FN16] Premium surcharges are even more important if payments rarely exceed liability limits of coverage.

[FN17] White's (1989) theoretical work made no prediction about the effect of changing from contributory to comparative negligence on drivers' incentives to be careful. However, in her empirical analysis of rear-end collisions in California, she found that drivers have a greater incentive to exercise due care under a contributory negligence rule. Her empirical analysis was essentially confirmed by Sloan and Schenzler's (1992) analysis of national closed automobile insurance claims data and jury verdicts from a broader range of types of automobile cases and from more jurisdictions. An earlier study of effects of comparative versus contributory negligence by Wittman (1986) used the same data as White (1989).

[FN18] For a summary of estimates of price and income elasticities, see Manning et al. (1991), p. 179. See Males (1986), Saffer and Grossman (1987a, 1987b), and Chaloupka et al. (1993) for evidence on the effect of the minimum drinking age on motor vehicle fatalities.

[FN19] For evidence on the effect of vehicle miles driven on motor vehicle fatalities, see, e.g., Chaloupka et al. (1993).

[FN20] Although males have higher fatality rates, there are only minor differences in ratios of drivers by gender by state. Thus since the state is the measurement unit, we did not perform separate analysis by gender.

[FN21] The District of Columbia was dropped because the border-crossing problem is particularly great for this jurisdiction. We dropped Alaska and Hawaii because information on several key variables was missing.

[FN22] In addition to the District of Columbia, Alaska, and Hawaii, state-years excluded were Delaware, 1982-85; Idaho, 1984; Maine, 1982-85, 1988-90; New Hampshire, 1982-87; New Jersey, 1982-83, 1988-90; Massachusetts, 1990; Montana, 1989-90; North Dakota, 1982-88; Rhode Island, 1986-90; and Wyoming, 1982-83.

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(Cite as: 14 Int'l Rev. L. & Econ. 53)

[FN23] An alternative specification would have been to include miles driven in the denominator of the dependent variable rather than population. Miles driven does not account for the number of passengers in a vehicle or pedestrians, who, when killed in a traffic fatality, are included in the numerator. We do include an explanatory variable for miles driven.

[FN24] A search with Lexis was performed to obtain information on the existence and dates of adoption of dram shop laws. Such laws may have been established by statute or by a judicial decision. We considered a law to apply to a year if it was in effect during most of the year.

[FN25] The data came from various issues of the American Insurance Association's Summary of Selected State Laws and Regulations Relating to Automobile Insurance.

[FN26] The surcharge applied to married males over age 25. The survey from which this information was derived also asked insurers for the surcharge for a DUI conviction on males under age 25, but no information was requested on surcharges for chargeable accidents. The mean surcharge for DUI imposed on males under age 25 was higher than that imposed on males over 25 for this type of conviction (Sloan and Githens, forthcoming). Since we did not have a measure for both types of surcharges for persons under age 25, we used the over 25 age group surcharge for both.

[FN27] The existence and year of adoption of such laws came from State Farm's No-Fault Press Reference Manual and the All-Industry Research Advisory Council (1989). We obtained state and year-specific estimates of the number of claims involving bodily injury that fell below states' no-fault thresholds for filing a tort liability claim from national closed claims databases for 1977 and 1987 provided on public use tapes by AIRAC. To derive estimates by state and year, we linearly interpolated the estimates for the two years. Estimates for 1988-90 were based on trends projected for 1977-87 differences. As seen in Table 1, according to our interpolated results, the fraction of claims barred from tort liability declined slightly, from 0.10 to 0.07. An alternative would have been to include a variable for the real dollar value of the threshold. The problem with this alternative involves choice of deflator and difficulties in accounting for secular trends in claim size unrelated to the threshold. The only national samples on the distribution of automobile liability claims by dollar values are the 1977 and 1987 AIRAC samples we used. Thus, use of a dollar threshold would not eliminate the need to interpolate.

[FN28] Information on liability rules by state and year came from a review of state statutes supplemented with information from Woods (1978, 1987), Little (1989), Mutter (1990), and Curran (1992).

[FN29] Per capita income was obtained from the Survey of Current Business.

[FN30] See Males (1986), Saffer and Grossman (1987a, 1987b).

[FN31] Information on these penalties was obtained from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Digest of State Alcohol-Highway Safety Related Legislation, various years.

[FN32] The fine for failure to wear a seatbelt was obtained from a search of Lexis.

[FN33] These data came from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Statistical Abstract of the U.S., various years.

[FN34] The number of miles drive per driver and the fraction of miles driven in rural areas were obtained from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Highway Statistics.

[FN35] Saffer and Grossman (1987a, 1987b) included religion variables as an alternative to state binary variables.

[FN36] The weights are [njt(theta)jt(1 - (theta)jt)]1/2, where njt is the number of persons in an age group in the jth state in year t.

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[FN37] "reg." refers to the regression number in Table 2 or 3. Numbers are given at the top of each column. To place the interaction terms in comparable units with the binary variables, the surcharge is expressed as a fraction in Tables 2 and 3. However, for discussion purposes it is easier to think in percentages.

[FN38] See, e.g., Manning et al. (1991).

[FN39] See footnote 9.

[FN40] In another analysis by the authors (Sloan et al., forthcoming), statistically significant results were also obtained for dram shop laws when we used mortality data from another source, fewer explanatory variables, a different functional form (linear probability function without weighting), and a slightly shorter time period (1982-88). Chaloupka et al. (1993) also found that dram shop laws reduce motor vehicle fatality rates, using FARS data but with a different equation specification. While this degree of robustness is encouraging, another unpublished analysis by us using data at the level of the individual from the 1984-90 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveys found that these laws had no influence on the probability of binge drinking or on the probability of drinking and driving, conditional or not conditional on having engaged in binge drinking. (Binge drinking was defined as having had five or more drinks on an occasion during the month before the survey.)

[FN41] Asch and Levy (1987) did not find that the minimum drinking age affected motor vehicle death rates.

[FN42] On the probability of getting caught when driving under the influence of alcohol, see Ross (1984), pp. 104-108.

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