Alcohol-impaired driving in US counties, 2002\u20132012

Jacob E Sunshine,Laura Dwyer-Lindgren,Sam R Sharar,Ali H Mokdad,Erin B Palmisano,Eileen M Bulger,Alan Chen

doi:10.1186/s12963-018-0158-4

Abstract

BackgroundExcessive alcohol consumption and alcohol-impaired driving remain significant public health problems, leading to considerable morbidity and mortality, particularly among younger populations.MethodsUsing data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), we employed a small areas modeling strategy to estimate the county-level annual prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving in every United States county for the years 2002 through 2012, the latest year in which county identifiers were publicly available.ResultsAlcohol-impaired driving episodes declined from 157.0 million in 2002 (prevalence 3.8%: 95% uncertainty interval [UI], 3.7%–4.0%) to 129.7 million in 2012 (prevalence 3.7%: 95% UI, 3.5%–3.8%), a 17.4% decline. There is considerable variation in the prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving at the county level, ranging from 2.0% in the Sitka City Borough of Alaska to 9.3% in Nance County, Nebraska. Clusters of increased alcohol-impaired driving were observed in Northern Wisconsin (Marinette, Florence, Forest, Vilas, Oneida, Iron counties), North Dakota (Cavalier, Pembina, Walsh, Ramsey, Nelson, Benson, Eddy counties) and Montana (Sheridan, Daniels, Roosevelt, Valley, Phillips, Petroleum, Garfield counties).ConclusionsThis study showed guarded progress with respect to the occurrence of alcohol-impaired driving episodes in the US from 2002 to 2012. Because these data rely on self-report, this likely represents an underestimate of the true prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving in the US. As the US continues to have several million episodes of alcohol-impaired driving each month, renewed efforts are needed to mitigate this high-risk health behavior.

Highlights

Excessive alcohol consumption and alcohol-impaired driving remain significant public health problems, leading to considerable morbidity and mortality, among younger populations
During the years in which the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) asked respondents about alcohol-impaired driving (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012) there were an estimated 851,902,397 episodes of reported alcohol-impaired driving in the US
In 2002, the age-standardized prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving in the US was 3.8% (95% uncertainty intervals (UI), 3.7–4.0), compared to 3.7% (95% UI, 3.5%–3.8%) in 2012

Summary

Introduction

Excessive alcohol consumption and alcohol-impaired driving remain significant public health problems, leading to considerable morbidity and mortality, among younger populations. Aside from vehicle speed, the most significant and measureable risk factor for involvement in, and harm from, MVCs is alcohol-impaired driving (AID) [3]. In the US, alcohol impairment is involved in roughly onethird of all MVC fatalities [4] and is an independent risk factor for increased severity of motor collision injuries [5]. Previous reports on alcohol-impaired driving provide nationaland state-based estimates, considerable injury prevention and traffic enforcement occur at the municipal level; county-level information is useful to help guide allocation of limited public health resources and to support targeted injury prevention efforts. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), we sought to estimate the county-level annual prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving in every US county for the years 2002 through 2012

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion