Executive Summary of An Evaluation of Alcohol Abuse Treatment as an Alternative to Drivers License Suspension or Revocation (Final Report to the Legislature in Accord with Senate Bill (SB) 38-Gregorio)

Executive Management Information System

By: Rick Williams, Steve Krimetz, & Ron O' Dell

The Executive Management Information System was an attempt to develop a departmental management information system (MIS) for DMV. Summarized production data was compiled and formatted to provide information for middle and upper management.

Evaluation of Tour-Bus Operator Knowledge Test

By: Michael Kellerman & Robert A. Hagge

To evaluate the written knowledge test for tour bus operators and to provide test and item statistics.

Evaluation of Third-Party Drive Testing of Passenger Vehicle Operators

By: Robert Hagge

To compare the driving records of passenger vehicle (PV) operators who passed a third-party (DL 170) drive test with those of PV drivers who passed a drive test administered by Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or California Highway Patrol (CHP).

Evaluation of the Spanish Class C Driver License Written Knowledge Tests

By: Sukhvir S. Brar

This report presents the results of an evaluation of the Spanish language written knowledge tests completed by applicants for an original or renewal Class C driver license. The report presents the test fail rate, mean number of errors, and internal‐consistency reliability for each test form, as well as the pass rate, item choice selection rates, and item‐total correlation for each question on each form. Items that need to be reviewed for possible rewording or replacement are identified. The results are based on 4,539 completed test forms collected from all California Department of Motor Vehicle field offices from July 9 through 13, 2007.

Evaluation of the Referral Driving Performance EvaluationProgram—Follow-Up Report

By: Scott V. Masten

This study evaluated the safety impact of the new Referral Driving Performance Evaluation (RDPE) drivetest program. The 3-year prior accident and citation rates for drivers taking the RDPE drive tests werecompared to the general driving population and to drivers who passed the Special Drive Test (SDT) in anearlier DMV study. The results indicated that in every age and gender category except one, drivers in theRDPE program had much higher prior accident and citation rates than did drivers in general. This findingsupported the department’s policy of testing drivers referred for medical and other reasons. The prioraccident rates for drivers who passed the RDPE tests were not significantly different from those for driverswho failed the tests. Hence, the validity of using RDPE test results as indicators of accident risk was notconclusively supported by the data. Contrary to expectation, drivers who passed the RDPE tests also hadaccident rates similar to those for drivers who passed the SDT, which indicated that the RDPE tests wereno better than the SDT at distinguishing between higher- and lower-risk drivers. However, because theRDPE tests fail a much higher percentage of referral drivers than does the SDT, the tests do result inaccident savings.

EVALUATION OF THE REDESIGNED DL 44 DRIVER LICENSE APPLICATION FORM

By: Scott V. Masten

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the redesigned DL 44 (Rev. 6/97) driver license application form. The Business Process Reengineering team revised the DL 44 to make it more user friendly, simplify the form’s language, and remove redundant or unneeded information. One of the changes was to combine the two vision and physical/mental (P/M) condition questions into a single question on the revised DL 44. The purpose of the current study was to assess whether the percentage of applicants self-reporting P/M conditions that could affect their ability to drive safely was reduced by combining the vision disorder and P/M condition questions into one question on the redesigned form.

Evaluation of the Delegated Drive Test Pilot Program: Technical Appendix

By: Scott V. Masten

This study evaluated the safety impact of allowing driving schools to administer the Driving PerformanceEvaluation (DPE) to provisional license applicants. The results of the driver record comparisons betweenprovisional applicants tested by the driving schools and those tested by DMV did not indicate a statisticallysignificant difference in the 6-month post-licensure accident or citation rates for the groups. Unfortunately,inadequate sample sizes and the potential biases present in the study preclude drawing any firm conclusionsregarding the comparative safety impact of private versus DMV testing. However, the results of the scoringconsistency and reliability analyses are more interpretable and less subject to these problems. The comparisons ofscoring consistency between driving school and DMV examiners indicates that the driving school examinersfollowed the DPE scoring criteria less stringently than did the DMV examiners, and were far more lenient, havingpassed many applicants who subsequently failed the drive test at DMV. Although these findings also requirequalification, it is very unlikely that differences of the magnitude observed can be attributed to bias alone. The lowvolume of subjects, which was a major reason for the low statistical poser of the analyses, may indicate that themarket for delegated testing is small, both within the general public and the driver training industry itself

Evaluation of the Commercial Driver License Knowledge Tests

By: Patricia A. Romanowicz

To provide Program and Policy Administration (PP A) with item and test statistics useful for developing and improving the commercial driver license (CDL) knowledge tests.

EVALUATION OF THE CLASS C DRIVER LICENSE WRITTEN KNOWLEDGE TESTS

By: Scott V. Masten

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the English DL 5 (Rev. 3/96), Spanish DL 5 (Rev. 7/95), and English DL 5T (Rev. 3/96) driver written license tests. Specifically, the study assessed the fail rate, mean number of items missed, and internal-consistency reliability for each test form, as well as the pass rate, percentage of applicants selecting each answer choice, and item-total correlation for each item on each test form.