The Minimum Purchase Age for Alcohol and Young-Driver Fatal Crashes: A Long-Term View

Abstract

The results of this study argue that increases in state drinking ages do not save lives. Raising the drinking age raises the age of highest traffic fatality rate but does not produce any net savings of lives, because more lives are lost among older drivers than are saved among younger drivers. This study's conclusions differ from the conclusions of most previous studies of the subject. Some of these differences have been discussed. In the final analysis the question is not how many studies line up on each side, but whether the savings in lives predicted to result from raised drinking ages have in fact resulted. It is clear from even a casual glance at the data from recent years, and abundantly clear from a detailed analysis, that states that have raised their drinking ages have suffered a net increase in fatal crashes most likely to involve drinking among drivers under the age of twenty-one compared to states that did not raise their drinking ages. The increase is too small to be statistically significant, but it is large enough to say with assurance that raised drinking ages do not deter fatal crashes by young drivers. When individual age groups in the various states cited in this study are examined, some conclusions, albeit tentative, can be drawn. Raising the drinking age above eighteen has slight beneficial effects on eighteen-year- old drivers but more substantial negative effects on nineteen-, twenty-, and twenty-one-year-old drivers. Raising the drinking age above nineteen has similar but weaker effects on affected and just-older age groups. Twenty-year-olds appear to suffer sharp increases in fatal crashes when banned from drinking or when twenty is made the first year of legal drinking as a result of MLPA increases, but the data in this case are sparse. Raised drinking ages are associated with slight increases in fatal crashes among drivers under the age of eighteen.