A Long-term Community-wide Intervention to Reduce Alcohol-related Traffic Injuries: Salinas, California

Abstract

The community of Salinas, California, carried out activities to reduce alcoholrelated injuries from November 1993 to December 1996. The first interventions began in November 1993, with increased enforcement by police of sobriety checkpoints combined with extensive use of the media. This was later augmented by additional interventions addressing sales to minors, responsible beverage service, and a general effort to reduce access to alcohol in the community, such as at public events. As these activities were part of a large research project to reduce alcohol-related injury, the means of evaluating this program are very robust, including the use of a comparison community. Specifically, the evaluation data for Salinas and the comparison community included 16 years of crash data, 6 years of hospital discharge data, and, for Salinas only, 4 years of data collected on drivers at roadside surveys. This report will demonstrate that the interventions initiated were successful in lowering the rate of nighttime traffic injuries and the number of admissions to hospitals due to traffic accidents. Altogether there were 116 fewer injury accidents, representing a savings of $7,076,000 in the 38 months.