THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE RETAIL AVAILABILITY OF ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOL SALES TO ALCOHOL-RELATED TRAFFIC CRASHES

The research literature on the relationship of alcohol consumption to motor vehicle crash risk clearly implicates the importance of minimizi ng the use of alcohol in conjunction with the operation of motor vehic les. However, there has been relatively little documentation of the di rect impact of change in beverage-specific alcohol sales on the most c ommon surrogate for alcohol-involved traffic crashes, single-vehicle n ightime fatalities. Similarly, there have been few studies of the rela tionship between the physical availability of alcohol and fatal crash rates which have concurrently controlled for differences in alcohol sa les. Indeed, the possibility that reduced availability might lead to i ncreases rather than decreases in fatal crashes (due to increased driv ing after drinking) has not been adequately tested. This paper present s a series of analyses of time-series cross-sectional data from 38 sta tes over 12 years to evaluate the impact of changes in alcohol sales a nd the physical availability of alcohol upon single-vehicle nighttime fatal crashes. The: results of the I study showed, first, that indepen dent of a number of economic and demographic covariates, :rates of sin gle-vehicle nighttime fatal crashes were most strongly related to sale s of beer and less so to sales of spirits and wine. Second, net of bev erage-specific alcohol sales, the physical availability of alcohol was not related to measurable changes in fatal crash rates. Thus, reducti ons in availability intended to reduce alcohol sales and problems woul d not appear to increase traffic-related crashes through increased dri ving exposure.