Driving While Intoxicated -- ITSA

Driving while intoxicated is one of the most serious traffic safety problems - if not the most serious - faced by all industrialized countries. Not only are lives lost and people injured, but the cost to society in medical expenses, insurance claims, direct government costs and lost productivity are staggering. While progress has been made in reducing DWI worldwide, much work still needs to be done to get this problem under control.

Magnitude of the Problem

While in most of the industrialized world major declines in drinking and driving have occurred in the last decade, it still is a major safety problem. In the United States in 1994, almost 17.000 people died in alcohol-related road crashes. That was 42 percent of all fatalities in road crashes. In the Netherlands in 1994, 4.9 percent of all car drivers on weekend-nights had a BAC above the legal limit of 0.05 percent.

In Canada in 1990, 43 percent of fatally injured drivers tested positive for alcohol. In Australia, the percentage of fatally injured drivers who had a BAC above the legal limit (0.05 percent in most states) was 30 percent in 1992.

Steps to be Taken

Countries have taken various countermeasures to deal with the drinking driving problem. As research has been conducted on the results of these different approaches to the problem, those found to be effective have been more broadly adopted. Other approaches that appear to be effective in one country, may not be applicable in another.

One approach that has been used by many countries is the lowering of the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) limit. This began to occur as it became clear that the risk of accident involvement increased rapidly above a BAC of 0.05 percent. During the 1980s and 1990s numerous countries began reducing there legal BACs from levels above 0.10 percent to levels ranging from 0.02 percent in Sweden, to 0.05 percent in more and more European countries, to 0.08 percent in Canada. In the United States most states remain at 0.10 percent (13 states have reduced to 0.08 percent). However, most U.S. states are reducing the legal BAC for young drivers to 0.00 or 0.02 percent.

There seems to be an acceptance in many countries of 0.05 percent as the preferable bac-limit. The ECMT (European Council of Ministers of Transport) has recommended this as a maximum already many years ago, as well as the ECE in Geneva.

Recently, the ETSC (European Transport Safety Council) published a state of the art review about DWI, in which also a draft EU-directive of 0.05 percent as a maximum is supported.

This trend towards 0.05 percent as maximum limit has of course a scientific background. Since the Grand Rapids' study by Prof. Borkenstein in 1964, it is widely recognised that the risk of accident involvement increases rapidly beyond 0.05 percent. Many other studies after this have confirmed or even sharpened those original findings.

Other measures that have been adopted by numerous countries include:

improved legislation making it easier to apprehend and prosecute drinking drivers

enhanced police enforcement campaigns that include the police use of random breath testing and sobriety checkpoints
the use of evidential breath testing devices
administrative procedures to revoke the license of driver who fail breathtest
public awareness brought about by citizen's concerns.

In the United States, all States raised the legal drinking age to age 21. Research as shown that more than 14,000 young lives have been saved by this action in the past few decades. While this was effective in the United States, it may not be a feasable tool in other countries for a number of reasons.

Also strategies towards public awareness should be adapted to national circumstances. For example:

"Don't drink before driving" is quite a different strategy compared to "don't drive after drinking". The first one is trying to influence drinking behavior, the latter is trying to influence driving/mobility behavior. In some countries the first strategy might be more feasible than the latter one.

Notes

Driving while intoxicated does not refer exclusively to the use of alcohol. Also, the use of prescribed or illicit drugs might lead to driving while impaired.

Both prescribed and illicit drug use, especially in combination with alcohol use, are a road safety problem in particular, as well as a transportation safety problem in general.

Most studies in these areas indicate that the tranquillizers in the prescribed drug category are the most frequently found type, and marihuana in the illicit drug category. These studies in most ITSA-countries and elsewhere have been based on random-roadside surveys but mostly on samples from persons involved in road accidents. Although the number of persons on the road found under the influence of drugs is in most countries somewhere between 5-10 times less than those under the influence of alcohol, specific countermeasures should be developed for prevention. This problem concerns the other transport modes as well.

Another point for concern is the abuse of alcohol in other transport modes. While fatal road accidents, related to alcohol consumption, are almost a problem for all citizens and road users, the use of alcohol in more professional transport modes like shipping, aviation and railways might be underrated in many countries.