Are countries’ drink‐driving policies associated with harms involving another driver’s impairment?

Greenfield, Thomas K; Cook, Won K; Karriker‐Jaffe, Katherine J; Li, Libo; Room, Robin

doi:10.1111/acer.14526

Are countries’ drink‐driving policies associated with harms involving another driver’s impairment?

journal contribution

posted on 2025-05-02, 02:00 authored by Thomas K Greenfield, Won K Cook, Katherine J Karriker‐Jaffe, Libo Li, Robin RoomRobin Room

Abstract:-

Introduction: International drink-driving policy research generally focuses on aggregate outcomes (e.g., rates of crashes, fatalities) without emphasizing secondhand alcohol-related vehicular harms. In contrast, we investigate associations between drink-driving policies and harms involving another driver’s impairment.

Methods: Alcohol’s harms to others (AHTO) survey data from 12 countries (analytic N = 29,616) were linked to national alcohol policy data from the World Health Organization. We examined separately associations of two 12-month driving-related AHTOs (passenger with an impaired driver; vehicular crash involving someone else’s drink driving) with 3 national drinking-driving policies—legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits, use of random breath testing, use of sobriety checkpoints, and comprehensive penalties for drink-driving (community service, detention, fines, ignition interlocks, license suspension/revocation, mandatory alcohol treatment, vehicle impoundment, and penalty point system), plus 2 alcohol tax variables (having excise taxes and value-added tax [VAT] rate). Multilevel logistic regression addressed clustering of individuals within countries and subnational regions, while adjusting for individuals’ gender, age, marital status, risky drinking, and regional drinking culture (% male risky drinkers in sub-national region).

Results: Controlling for national-, regional-, and individual-level covariates, comprehensive penalties were significantly and negatively associated with both outcomes; other vehicular policy variables were not significantly associated with either outcome. A society’s VAT rate was negatively associated with riding with a drunk driver. Regional male drinking culture was positively associated with riding with an impaired driver, but was not significantly associated with being in a vehicular crash due to someone else’s drinking. In both models, being male, being younger, and engaging in risky drinking oneself each were positively associated with vehicular harms due to someone else’s drinking.

Conclusions: Although results are associational and not causal, comprehensive penalties may be promising policies for mitigating driving-related harms due to another drinker. Higher VAT rate might reduce riding with a drunk driver.

Funding

The data used in this study are from the GENAHTO Project (Gender and Alcohol's Harm to Others), supported by NIAAA Grant No. R01 AA023870 (Alcohol's Harm to Others: Multinational Cultural Contexts and Policy Implications). Support for aspects of the project has come from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (THPF), the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC Grant No. 1065610), and the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/ National Institutes of Health (Grants R21 AA012941, R01 AA015775, R01 AA022791, R01 AA023870, and P50 AA005595). Support for individual country surveys was provided by government agencies and other national sources. National funds also contributed to collection of all of the data sets included in WHO projects.

History

Publication Date

2021-02-01

Journal

Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research

Volume

45

Issue

4

Pagination

7p. (p. 429-435)

Publisher

Wiley

ISSN

1530-0277

Rights Statement

© 2020 by the Research Society on Alcoholism. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Greenfield, T.K., Cook, W.K., Karriker-Jaffe, K.J., Li, L. and Room, R. (2021), Are Countries’ Drink-Driving Policies Associated With Harms Involving Another Driver’s Impairment?. Alcohol Clin Exp Res, 45: 429-435. https://doi.org/10.1111/acer.14526, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/acer.14526. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions: https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/self-archiving.html