Alcohol and other drugs: Crash risk for different groups of drivers

Pacific Institute For Res And Evaluation, Beltsville MD

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Abstract

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities are no longer declining, but are even increasing in the United States. It has been suggested that this increase in fatalities is partially due to inefficiencies in current policies, in particular a failure to acount for new forms of risks (e.g., alcohol and texting, alcohol and marijuana) and behavioral changes by some population groups previously viewed as being at a low risk of alcohol-related crashes (e.g., young female drivers, Latinas). Simply stated: Some current driving-under-the-influence (DUI) policies may be outdated. Extant DUI laws are based on DUI risk estimates that are nearly two decades old and may not capture the DUI risk that some group of drivers might currently face (e.g., young female drivers; alcohol and marijuana users). Failure to acknowledge the actual risks some population groups are now facing may have contributed to current policies' failure to properly address such risks. This application responds to the program announcement PA-14-338, Secondary Analyses of Existing Alcohol Epidemiology Data (R21), by taking advantage of two unique and recent datasets: the 2007 and 2013 National Roadside Surveys (NRSs) in conjunction with matching fatal crashes in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS, a census of U.S. fatal crashes) to analyze data on the relative risk of selected drivers. The matching of the two most recent NRSs with pertinent FARS data will allow a case-control study that will yield a comprehensive estimation of alcohol-related fatal crash risk (alone and/or in conjunction with marijuana) for specific groups of drivers, as well as an estimation of the maximum number of fatal crashes that could be avoided if corrections to extant policies were made or new policies targeted to the groups at risk were implemented. In summary, this submission focuses on informing policymakers about key target groups of high-risk drivers, particularly those neglected in prior studies. At stake is the efficient use of increasingly scarce resources, for the targeted risk estimates provided by this study will be applied to the design of new laws and programs.