7C.003 Drink Special Laws and Alcohol-Related Fatal Crashes in the United States. (14th March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Puac-Polanco, Victor; Mauro, Pia; Keyes, Katherine; Branas, Charles
• Is Part Of: Injury prevention. Volume 27(2021)Supplement 2
• Page Start: A58
• Page End: A58
• Publication Date: 2021-03-14
• Subjects: Children's accidents -- Prevention -- Periodicals; Accidents -- Prevention -- Periodicals; 617.1
• DOI: 10.1136/injuryprev-2021-safety.176
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1353-8047

Abstract

Abstract : Background: In the United States, every day, close to 30 people die in alcohol-impaired related crashes. Given the known role of alcohol in traffic injuries, we assessed the impact of drink special laws on alcohol- and non-alcohol-related fatal motor vehicle crash rates. Methods: We performed a synthetic control analysis of US data from 1982 to 2017. We used publicly available data to evaluate the effects of implementing any drink special law at the state-level during the study period on fatality rates per 100 million vehicle-miles of travel. We used an enhanced version of the SC method for the analysis of multiple treated units. Results: Overall, treated states with any drink special law reduced alcohol-related fatal crashes per 100 million VMT by 0.01 (p-value = 0.84) in year one, 0.10 (p-value = 0.14) in year three, 0.07 (p-value = 0.28) in year five, and 0.16 (p-value = 0.01) in year 10 post-implementation compared to the synthetic control trend. Implementation of any drink special law also produced reductions of non-alcohol-related fatal crashes per 100 million VMT by 0.19 (p-value = 0.11) in year one, 0.24 (p-value = 0.03) in year three, 0.25 (p-value = 0.00) in year five, and 0.18 (p-value = 0.00) in year 10 compared to the synthetic control trend. Findings for the number of laws implemented and each drink special laws were mixed. Conclusions: Drink special laws appeared to be associated with larger reductions of non-alcohol-related fatal crashes but no with the hypothesized target population, the alcohol-related fatal crashes.