The impact on alcohol-related collisions of the partial decriminalization of impaired driving in British Columbia, Canada
Date
2013-05
Authors
Macdonald, Scott
Zhao, Jinhui
Martin, Gina
Brubacher, Jeff
Stockwell, Tim
Arason, Neil
Steinmetz, Susanne
Chan, Herbert
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract
Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of administrative sanctions introduced as part of a new law for drinking drivers in British Columbia, Canada. The new law, known as immediate roadside prohibitions (IRP), aimed to increase the efficiency of police and courts for processing drinking drivers, thereby increasing the certainty of their being apprehended and punished. However, in order to maintain these efficiencies, sanctions under this new law largely replaced laws under the Criminal Code of Canada for Driving While Impaired (DWI) by alcohol, which had more severe penalties but lower certainty of punishment. We examined whether the intervention was related to abrupt significant declines in three types of alcohol-related collisions (i.e. fatalities, injuries or property damage only) compared to the same type of collisions without alcohol involvement. Methods: An interrupted time series design, with a non-equivalent control was used, testing for an inter-vention effect. Monthly rates of the three types of collisions with and without alcohol involvement werecalculated for the 15-year period before and the 1-year period after implementation of the new law. ARIMA time series analysis was conducted controlling for trend effects, seasonality, autocorrelation, and collisions without alcohol. Results: Significant average declines (p < 0.05) in alcohol-related collisions were found as follows: 40.4%for fatal collisions, 23.4% for injury collisions and 19.5% for property damage only collisions. No significant effects were found for any of the three comparable non-alcohol-related types of collisions. Conclusions: These results suggest that provincial law of administrative sanctions for drinking drivers and associated publicity was more effective for minimizing alcohol-related collisions than laws under the Canadian Criminal Code.
Description
Keywords
immediate roadside prohibitations, alcohol-related collision, interrupted time series design
Citation
S. Macdonald et al. / Accident Analysis and Prevention 59 (2013) 200– 205