DUI and Teens - A Study

ALCOHOL-IMPAIRED DRIVING COMMON AMONG YOUNGER DRIVERS. Actual DWI Arrests Represent Only Small Proportion of Actual Number of Alcohol-Impaired Drivers

CHICAGO--There were more than 120 million incidents of alcohol-impaired driving in the U.S. in 1993, including ten million episodes occurring among underage drinkers, according to an article in this week's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Simin Liu, M.D., M.S., and Robert D. Brewer, M.D., M.S.P.H., from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga., and colleagues estimated how frequently adults in the U.S. drive while impaired by alcohol. Dr. Liu is now with the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass.

They write: "Despite the enactment and enforcement of stricter legislation in many states, 2.5 percent of survey respondents reported alcohol-impaired driving during the month before the interview. Based on these self-reports, we estimate that there were nearly 123 million episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among adults in the U.S. during 1993; nearly ten million of these events occurred among persons aged 18 to 20 years. This estimate is 82 times higher than the 1.5 million arrests for driving while intoxicated in the U.S. that year."

The study included 102,263 adults age 18 and older, from 49 states and Washington, D.C., who were surveyed by telephone for the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in 1993.

The researchers found that there were 655 episodes of alcohol-impaired driving for each 1,000 adults. Alcohol-impaired driving was most frequent among men aged 21 to 34 years (1,739 episodes per 1,000 adults) and was nearly as frequent among men aged 18 years to 20 years (1,623 episodes per 1,000 adults), despite legislation in all states that prohibits the sale of alcohol to persons younger than 21.

The authors believe their results provide a conservative estimate of the prevalence of alcohol-impaired drivers because of the social stigma attached to reporting drinking and driving; incorrectly assessing whether they were impaired; and not including data from drivers younger than age 18, a group that has a high prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving.

The researchers write: "... We believe that BRFSS data on alcohol-impaired driving are useful for estimating the magnitude of the problem, monitoring temporal trends, developing programs and policies, and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to prevent alcohol-impaired driving."

Aggressive Intervention Key to Preventing Drunk-Driving

Concerning possible interventions, the authors write: "Effective policies include prompt license suspension for persons arrested for driving while impaired and lowering the legal blood alcohol level to, at most, 0.08 grams/deciliter for adults and 0.02 grams/deciliter for drivers younger than 21 years of age. Since alcohol-impaired driving still occurs frequently among persons from 18 to 20 years of age we also recommend strict enforcement of minimum drinking age laws and the passage of 'zero tolerance' laws, which lower the legal alcohol concentration for drivers younger than 21 years of age.

"We also strongly encourage clinicians to be involved in the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving. In addition to supporting public policies, clinicians can screen patients for alcohol problems; obtain blood alcohol concentrations on injured patients; and provide patients with brief interventions, refer them for specialized treatment, or both, depending on the severity of their drinking problem."

They conclude: "Through this combination of legal and medical interventions, we can further reduce the unacceptable burden of injury and death from alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes and facilitate the early diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism."

According to the authors, injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death in the U.S. among people one to 34 years old, and approximately 41 percent of the 40,676 traffic fatalities in 1994 were related to alcohol. Two of five people in the U.S. will be involved in an alcohol-related motor vehicle crash at some time during their lives.

Science News Press Releases for the week of January 8, 1997

Tags: Studies |  Underage drinking