Alcohol-related Traffic Accidents Research Articles

Research on Drinking Locations of Alcohol-Impaired Drivers: Implications for Prevention Policies

P UURRENT strategies to reduce alcohol-related problems, including drunk driving, focus primarily on changing the behavior of individuals. Educational campaigns and legal sanctions are designed to influence the attitudes e q and behaviors of individuals regarding drinking and > a driving. Researchers have supported this individual-oriented approach by providing decision makers with a plethora of empirical and descriptive data on the characteristics of people who drive under the influence of alcohol. In spite of this wealth of information, the success of the current policies to reduce alcohol-related traffic accidents has been limited. Recently, an increasing amount of attention has been directed towards a public health approach to preventing alcohol problems. This approach calls for supplementing individual-level change strategies with strategies that address the environmental and social factors associated with drinking problems (1-6). From a public health perspective, individual-level change strategies are necessary, but not sufficient, to address alcohol problems; changes must also take place in the larger systems that impact on individuals. For drinking and driving problems, one example of a larger system, or social environment, that deserves attention is the places where impaired drivers receive their last drink before driving. Various factors related to these drinking locations may contribute to the combination of drinking and driving behaviors. Therefore, an understanding of the relationship between impaired driving and place of last drink could have significant implications for prevention policies.

The relationships among driving while impaired charges, police drinking—driving roadcheck activity, media coverage and alcohol-related casualty traffic accidents

A correlational examination of 54 consecutive months of data from British Columbia on the relationships among the number of vehicles checked in police drinking-driving roadchccks, the number of driving while impaired (DWI) charges laid, the number and percent of alcohol-related casualty traffic accidents, and the extent of media coverage on drinking-driving (as measured by print media coverage), revealed that: the extent of media coverage, and not the extent of roadchecks or charging activity is probably the critical element in the reduction of drinking-driving accidents. The failure of the minimally publicized April–May 1984 British Columbia police roadcheck “blitz” to reduce either the number or proportion of alcohol-related casualty traffic accidents lent support to these correlational findings.

Youth, alcohol, and traffic accidents. Current status.

The interaction of youth, alcohol consumption and driving has been the leading contributor to morbidity and mortality in the United States among persons under 40 for over thirty years. While a considerable literature has evolved, only since 1968 has the literature acquired a truly scientific character; frequently the literature is not widely distributed and found only in technical reports. This contribution reviews the state of knowledge of youthful, alcohol-related traffic accidents based on both the open literature and the research which is found in technical documents. The consequences of youthful alcohol consumption and theories regarding the etiology of traffic accidents which result from drinking by youth, a review of attempts to reduce the magnitude of the problem, and recommendations for research are presented.

The role of machismo and the hispanic family in the etiology and treatment of alcoholism in hispanic american males

Abstract The literature on alcohol abuse and alcoholism among low-income Hispanics indicates that this community is severely devastated by alcoholism and its physical, mental and economic consequences. In particular, Hispanic men have markedly higher rates of alcoholism, arrests for drunken behavior, deaths due to cirrhosis of the liver, and deaths due to alcohol-related traffic accidents than do non-Latino American males. Widespread acceptance of the machismo ethos and its determining role in the structure, dynamics and value systems of the traditional Hispanic family encourage alcohol abuse by men. Further, both “successful” and “unsuccessful” machista behavior may generate dysphoric states for which the time-honored remedy of many cultures is alcohol. The positive ideals of machismo may be enlisted in the fight against the Hispanic male's alcoholism through the use of supportive rather than reconstructive therapies. The treatment of choice is family therapy which should be employed in conjunction with ...

Effects of alcohol and marijuana on dynamic visual acuity: I. Threshold measurements

Alcohol and marijuana produce significant dose-related reductions in dynamic visual acuity. Ten subjects participated in a double-blind experiment involving three dose levels of each drug (including placebo). The reduction of DVA produced by alcohol (1.0 ml 95% ethanol/kg body weight) was greater than for marijuana (15 mg Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), and we suggest that this difference was produced by differential oculomotor effects of the two drugs. We have speculated that reduction in DVA under alcohol may be a contributing factor in alcohol-related traffic accidents.