A report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed that over 4 million adults in the country sometimes drink and drive.
According to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Aug. 7, alcohol-impaired driving crashes represent about a third of all fatal car accidents in the U.S. To estimate the yearly rate, number of episodes and prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving, the CDC examined self-reported data gathered from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey for 2012. Results showed that around 4.2 million adults in the country have driven under the influence within the last month, translating to an estimated 121 million times that someone who has had one too many was on the road behind the wheel.
The report suggested several ways of reducing alcohol-impaired driving, including: expanding sobriety checkpoints; enforcing blood alcohol concentration laws; using ignition interlocks (breath-test devices that stop an engine from running if a driver surpasses alcohol limits); imposing higher alcohol taxes; and enacting primary seat belt laws.
States with primary seat belt laws actually fared better in the study, registering lower rates of alcohol-impaired driving.
"Seat belts are about 50 percent effective in preventing driver fatalities in crashes, and seat belt use is higher in states with a primary seat belt law compared with use in states with a secondary law," wrote Amy Jewett and colleagues in the report, pointing out improvements that could be seen if all states had a primary seat belt law in place.
When primary seat belt laws are present in a state, law enforcers are allowed to stop drivers simply for not wearing a seat belt. Secondary seat belt laws, on the other hand, only permit law enforcement to ticket drivers for seat belt infractions if they were initially stopped for another reason. Out of all states in the country, New Hampshire is the only one not to have a seat belt law for adults.
The BRFSS is a random-digit-dialed phone survey collecting data on health risks from non-institutionalized adults at least 18 years of age. For the study, data from all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia were used. In 2011, both mobile and landline phone interviews were carried out for the BRFSS. To reduce bias, the 2012 survey data used in the report were weighted with the raking method.
Photo: James Palinsad | Flickr
