Attitude-change-based road safety re-education in catalonia: recidivism, severity, and changes in officially recorded sanction profiles

This study examined differences in the frequency, severity, and distribution of officially recorded traffic sanctions before and after attendance at attitude-change-based road safety awareness and re-education courses integrated into the Penalty Point System in Catalonia. A retrospective longitudinal pre-post design was applied to administrative records from the complete 2017 cohort of 14,022 course participants. The main sanction-profile analyses focused on 9,886 drivers with at least one pre-course sanction, accounting for 36,546 pre-course and 23,022 post-course sanctions. Period-by-category differences were examined using Pearson chi-square tests of homogeneity, Cramér's V, and aggregate log-linear Poisson models. During follow-up, 37.1% of drivers with previous sanctions had no further officially recorded sanction, and the total sanction count in this group was 37.0% lower. Alcohol- and drug-related sanctions showed the largest relative decline (-77.9%), followed by safety-device and driver-related sanctions. Mobile phone-related sanctions declined by 62.0%. Speeding showed a smaller reduction (-17.2%) and represented a larger share of the post-course profile. Significant distributional differences were found for the main offence categories, offence severity, driver-related offence subtypes, and serious speeding subtypes (Cramér's V = 0.128-.210). Sanctions recorded in average-speed enforcement sections and urban access areas increased despite declines in other speeding categories. These findings show that a single recidivism indicator would conceal meaningful differences in offence type, severity, and speeding context. Because the study was observational, lacked a comparison group, and relied on detected offences, the patterns cannot be attributed causally to course attendance or interpreted as direct evidence of behavioural or attitudinal change.