Self-reported alcohol-impaired (AI) driving has increased in the United States during the last decade.
New findings show that most AI driving is due to binge drinkers rather than heavy or alcohol-dependent drinkers. Researchers say effective strategies must address both excessive drinking as well as impaired driving.
Motor-vehicle crashes that are alcohol-related in nature kill approximately 17,000 Americans per year and, in the year 2000, cost more than $51 billion in related damages. A new study of the drinking patterns of alcohol-impaired (AI) drivers in the United States has found that most AI driving is performed by binge drinkers.
Results are published in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
“Previous research had found the number of self-reported AI driving episodes was increasing over the last eight years, especially among binge drinkers,” said Nicole T. Flowers, medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and corresponding author for the study. “Many current policies have focused on discouraging people from operating a vehicle while intoxicated instead of trying to prevent people from becoming intoxicated. Furthermore, when people are arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol the punitive measures frequently involve alcohol-treatment programs suitable for alcoholics but not necessarily suitable for non-alcohol dependent binge drinkers.”
“Although AI driving fatalities – as one measure of AI driving – have declined in the United States over the past 30 years, the reduction has been far less in the United States than in other highly motorized Western countries such as Canada, Australia, Japan, or Germany,” added David E. Nelson, senior scientific advisor with the Alcohol Team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Flowers and her colleagues analyzed data from the 2006 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the largest telephone health survey in the world with more than 350,000 adults interviewed each year. Established in 1984, BRFSS data is collected monthly from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, and used to track tobacco use, cardiovascular disease, dietary habits, weight changes, immunization status, and screening for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cancer.
For this study, alcohol-consumption patterns of self-reported AI-drivers among U.S. adults 18 years and older for all states were divided into four categories: non-binge/non-heavy, non-binge/heavy, binge/non-heavy, and binge/heavy. (Binge drinking was defined as 5+ drinks for men or 4+ drinks for women on one or more occasions in the previous month; heavy drinking was defined as more than two drinks per day for men or more than one drink per day for women.)
The results showed that approximately 84 percent of AI drivers were binge drinkers, and 88 percent of AI-driving episodes involved binge drinkers.
“We were surprised that binge drinkers who were not heavy drinkers made up 50 percent of all the self-reported AI drivers,” said Flowers. “We thought it would be a large percentage but didn't know it would be that high.”