Association between impaired driving law enforcement efforts and drinking and driving behavior

Alcohol-involved motor vehicle crashes resulted in 10,228 deaths in the United States in 2010. Alcohol-impaired driving laws are one important strategy for preventing alcohol-involved fatalities, but active enforcement of these laws is critical. Typically, drinking-driving enforcement strategies have been evaluated individually rather than as a combined measure of statewide enforcement. In this study, we assessed four types of impaired driving enforcement efforts through surveys of state patrol agencies (n=49) and a sample of local law enforcement agencies (n=1,082) and then used latent class analyses to identify groups of agencies based on their enforcement efforts. We found that among state patrol agencies, 90% utilized saturation patrols, 69% utilized sobriety checkpoints, 46% utilized efforts aimed at open container violations, and all used drinking-driving media campaigns. Among local law enforcement agencies, 57% utilized saturation patrols, 37% utilized sobriety checkpoints, 41% utilized efforts aimed at open container violations, and 61% collaborated with local media outlets to promote their enforcement. We identified three groups of agencies: (1) agencies with a strong pattern of enforcement, (2) agencies with little to no enforcement, and (3) agencies focused primarily on saturation patrols and media efforts. Using data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System on past month alcohol-involved driving (1.8% prevalence among all respondents; 2.8% for males, 0.8% for females), we will present results of regression models assessing the association between state levels of impaired-driving enforcement and rates of drinking and driving. We will discuss implications on how findings can help inform improved drinking-driving enforcement actions.