Public Policy and Policy Enforcement Effects on Changes in Female and Male Drunk Driving Consequences of drunk driving are serious, leading to loss of nearly 13,000 American lives (NHTSA 2007) and over one million arrests last year (FBI 2007). In order to develop successful public policies for reducing alcohol-related traffic mortality, it is necessary that we understand for whom and under what conditions policies are more and less effective. A reduced rate of traffic fatalities is consistently associated with implementing a lower 0.08% blood alcohol concentration (BAC) as the standard for arrest, but the policy's effectiveness varies across states and may be lesser for men. Law enforcement is a critical factor left out of policy evaluations.
The specific aims of this proposal are to: (1) Evaluate the effectiveness of 0.08% BAC legislation as a tool to reduce female compared to male drunk driving fatality rates across states;(2) Examine how 0.08% BAC law change affects DUI enforcement patterns, with attention to whether an unintended consequence of lower BAC limits is disparately targeting female offending patterns for arrest;and (3) Investigate how policy effects are modified by differences and changes in the vigor of law enforcement across states, over time, and by gender. The proposed study will draw on and supplement the Alcohol Policy Information System (APIS) and use several secondary data sources identified in NIAAA's Alcohol Epidemiology Data System to create a state-level longitudinal (1985-2005) database on: drunk driving fatalities drawn from the FARS fatal crash database, timing of state 0.08% BAC law changes, DUI arrests from the FBI, and controls for other key alcohol and traffic-safety laws, law enforcement resources, self-reported drunk driving compliance rates from the CDC'S BRFSS health survey, and alcohol consumption patterns. Multi-level growth-curve models produce state profiles of drunk driving trends and estimate precisely how the nation's and each state's trajectory was altered by DUI policy and enforcement shifts. Effect strength of policy and enforcement coefficients will be contrasted across female and male arrest models using equality of coefficient tests. Gender comparisons examine if policy and enforcement have more impact on decreasing women's fatal drunk driving accidents. The results from the project will be useful to policymakers because elucidating general mechanisms that contribute to effective policymaking will improve decision-making about where in the policy process to allocate resources for higher-impact results. Any significant gender- specific results would be useful for campaigns targeting groups at increasing risk for alcohol- related fatalities.
The proposed research contributes to NIH's Healthy People initiative to reduce alcohol-related vehicle crashes by investigating how to make drunken driving laws more effective for all segments of the population. By clarifying the role of law enforcement and reasons underlying any gender differences in 0.08% BAC policy effectiveness at reducing drunken driving deaths, alcohol policies can become a more beneficial means of improving health outcomes and decreasing accidental deaths.
| Schwartz, Jennifer; Davaran, Ardavan (2013) Enforcement following 0.08% BAC law change: sex-specific consequences of changing arrest practices? Addict Behav 38:2506-12 |
