Critical View of Countermeasure Development and Evaluation (From Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety, P 1145-1159, 1981, Leonard Goldberg, ed. -- See NCJ-110793)

• NCJ Number: 110795
• Author(s): G J S Wilde
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 15 pages
• Sale Source: Almqvist and Wiksell International
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: Sweden
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This paper examines major methodological difficulties in evaluating drunk-driving countermeasures and critiques the rational underlying legislation that seeks to combat drinking and driving.

Abstract

Attempts to evaluate such programs suffer from interpretive ambiguity because of the questionable relevance of such intermediate criteria as a reduction in nighttime crashes, distribution of blood alcohol content levels in driver fatalities, and the interchangeability of immediate accident causes. In addition, the underlying logic of many countermeasures is questionable. Many approaches rely on increasing penalties and increasing the risk of detection. Such a simplistic rationale has three problems: no clear and positive relationship exists between the size of the penalty and the general or special deterrent effect of the law, only partial evidence exists that accident risk depends on enforcement rate, and such approaches fail to account for the realities of the social context in which the law operates. Drinking and driving is a folk crime to which large segments of the driving population admits. Blood alcohol content laws lack credibility because of marked individual differences in behavioral tolerance to alcohol. A better approach to the drinking and driving problem is to enhance public safety demand and the level of safety desired by the public by increasing the benefits of safe behavior and the disadvantages of risky behavior. 4 figures and 30 references.