Even in states with legal drinking ages of 20 or 21, teenagers continue to be involved in a disproportionate share of alcohol involved fatal crashes. On June 23, 1983 Maine enacted legislation that suspends the driving license for one year of any person under age 20 identified by police as operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol level (BAL) above 02. This in effect means driving after any drinking at all. Prior to this new law teenagers as well adults needed to have a BAL of .10 before being considered legally under the influence (about 5 drinks in an hour for a 155 pound person). The new law entitles arrested offenders to an appeal, but suspension is automatically invoked until the person can demonstrate there was not probable cause to believe he/she was driving with a BAL above .02. We propose to evaluate what effects, if any, this new legislation will have on teenage drinking, frequency of driving after drinking, non-fatal, nighttime fatal and overall fatal crash involvement. A natural experimental design will compare Maine to Massachusetts. Massachusetts was chosen for comparison because it has similar weather, both states have a 20 year old drinking age, similar age of driver licensure, and did not significantly differ in rates of fatal accidents among teenagers relative to adults over the 4 pre-law years. Five hundred teenagers in Maine and five hundred in Massachusetts have been interviewed about their perceptions concerning drunk driving law enforcement in their state, their drinking behavior, drinking and driving behavior, and accident involvement during the year prior to the new law. These surveys were begun within one month of the law's passage. We propose to repeat these surveys three times at yearly intervals after the law and expand each survey to include 1000 16-19 year olds in each state. In addition, Maine's arrest and conviction data for the new offense will be monitored for four years, as will arrests of 16-19 year olds for driving under the influence in both states during the four years before and after the law. Fatal accident trends among teenagers will be compared for four years before and four years after the law. We will test whether teenagers in Maine perceive heightened drunk driving law enforcement, whether the frequency that they drive after drinking declines, and whether relative to Massachusetts, Maine achieves a lower rate of fatal crashes among teenagers after the law compared to before the law. The results of this project will be of importance to states nationwide that seek new ways to curb the disproportionate involvement of teenagers in fatal auto crashes.
| Strunin, L; Hingson, R (1987) Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and adolescents: knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Pediatrics 79:825-8 |
