Objective: Outcomes from previous studies report the driving under the influence (DUI) conviction rates for trauma patients in several cities within Canada and the United States over the last 2 ...decades. This study reports charge, conviction, and prosecution rates for trauma patients at 2 level I trauma centers servicing a large metropolitan city.
Methods: A retrospective review of the trauma databases was completed to identify patients meeting inclusion criteria. Four hundred sixty patients were identified and their records were compared with the district attorney's records for DUI charges and convictions.
Results: The conviction rate for this study was 8.7%, demonstrating continued low rates of conviction despite growing interest and public awareness of drinking and driving.
Conclusions: We discuss legal considerations that providers should consider when treating patients who have been drinking and driving.
Objective: The objects of this study were: To review the state of drug-impaired driving in Canada, particularly in light of the 2008 amendments to the Criminal Code, which authorized police to demand ...standardized field sobriety testing and drug recognition evaluations, and to consider whether alternative enforcement models would be more effective in terms of detecting and prosecuting drug-impaired drivers and thereby achieve greater deterrence.
Method: This article provides a review of survey data, roadside screening studies, and postmortem reports that indicate the prevalence of driving after drug use in Canada. It evaluates the Criminal Code's 2008 amendments and their impact on charges and convictions for drug-impaired driving. It then reviews some alternative enforcement models for drug-impaired driving that have been adopted in other jurisdictions, particularly toxicological testing, and evaluates them against Canada's social, political, and constitutional framework.
Results: Survey data, roadside screening studies, and postmortem reports indicate that driving after drug use is commonplace and is now more prevalent among young people than driving after drinking. Unfortunately, the 2008 Criminal Code amendments have not had their desired effects. The measures have proven to be costly, time-consuming, and cumbersome, and are readily susceptible to challenge in the courts. Accordingly, the charge rates for drug-impaired driving remain extremely low, and the law has had minimal deterrent effects.
The review of alternative enforcement models suggests that a system of random roadside saliva screening, somewhat similar to the model used in Victoria, Australia, will be the most effective in terms of detecting and prosecuting drug-impaired drivers and most consistent with Canada's legal and constitutional system.
Conclusions: Canada should establish per se limits for the most commonly used drugs, enforceable through a system of screening and evidentiary tests. This will be more efficient and cost-effective and will result in more reliable evidence for criminal trials. Although this system will inevitably be subject to constitutional challenge, existing case law suggests that it should be upheld as a reasonable limit on constitutional rights.
Objectives: The objectives of this study were to (a) use data from the 2007 National Roadside Survey (NRS) to determine the characteristics of weekend nighttime drivers with positive blood alcohol ...concentrations (BACs) on U.S. roads in 2007; (b) determine the relationship of the driving environment and trip characteristics associated with drinking drivers; and (c) compare the findings for the 2007 NRS with those for the 1996 NRS.
Methods: Like the 1996 NRS, the 2007 NRS used a stratified random national roadside survey sample of the contiguous 48 states and collected nighttime data on Fridays and Saturdays between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. Officers directed 8384 drivers into off-road parking areas where our research team asked them to participate in the survey.
Results: Of those approached, 7159 (85.4%) provided a breath test. Results revealed that 12 percent of the nighttime drivers had positive BACs, and of those, 2 percent were higher than the 0.08 BAC illegal limit in the United States. Since the 1996 NRS, we found significant reductions in the percentage of BAC-positive drivers across different demographic groups. Age was among the most significant factors associated with a weekend driver having a positive BAC. The probability that a driver would be drinking peaked in the 21- to 25-year-old age group. Male drivers were more likely than female drivers to be drinking, and Asian and Hispanic drivers were less likely than white drivers to be drinking. Drinking drivers were more likely to be driving short distances (5 or fewer miles) late at night (between 1 and 3 a.m.) and to be coming from a bar or restaurant. Finally, 26 percent of the drivers who reported that they would drive less than 5 miles on the night of the survey had positive BACs, compared to only 16 percent who indicated that they would drive between 6 and 20 miles and 10 percent who planned to drive more than 20 miles.
Conclusions: The 2007 NRS provides another benchmark in the 4-decade record of drinking drivers on American roads and provides a basis for measuring progress in combating driving under the influence during the coming decade.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction of enforcement and adjudication for general deterrence of drunk-driving. The authors present a triangular feedback model between three ...domains: police, courts and drunk-driving events. The authors’ deductive approach imposes no structural assumptions beyond the core of general deterrence theory.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a largely untapped data set for California’s 58 counties from 1990 to 2010, the authors estimate a series of heterogeneous panel Granger non-causality tests. This empirically based evidence is re-organized per the proposed triangular feedback model to objectively categorize local criminal justice systems as active, responsive or reactive (with respect to drunk-driving).
Findings
Our results suggest that state-level analyses obscure useful variations that empirical panel methods can now handle. The authors provide evidence that research based on empirically derived groupings, rather than inductively based preconceptions, is key to understanding enforcement and compliance. The authors provide a less confounded picture of the relationship between drunk-driving enforcement and adjudication.
Research limitations/implications
Our study addresses one offense for a particular state in the USA. It is an exploratory analysis. This analytical and empirical approach is new.
Practical implications
Our approach imposes very few a priori assumptions and requires a minimum of data series to be executed. The method can be broadly applied to a range of topics and observational units.
Social implications
The authors aim to expand identification of local systems’ effectiveness (or not) and mechanisms of for general deterrence of drunk-driving. The offense is one that can be committed easily and unintentionally; it does not presume anomie. The authors address general communities, not anomalies. Knowing how enforcement and compliance operate is essential to an array of behavioral externalities.
Originality/value
This is a new empirically based approach for analyzing social systems. It is a marriage of new macroeconomic time-series techniques with an old question, most often addressed by microeconomic research. This study uses an underutilized data source to construct a unique panel data set.
Background: We examined the extent to which driving under the influence (DUI) offenders delay reinstatement, the reasons for that delay, and the relationship of the delay to recidivism. Analyzed ...were the driving records of 40 million drivers (3 million convicted of DUI) from 7 of the largest states spanning 7 to 14 years. License suspension effectively reduces, but does not eliminate, impaired driving. Apparently, many feel they can avoid apprehension for unlicensed driving; the limited research to date suggests that up to 75% of convicted offenders continue to drive and up to 84% delay reinstatement for 3 or more years.
Methods: ANOVA and regression procedures were used to determine the relationship of prior driving record and sentence length to the DUI offender’s delay in reinstatement. Meta‐analysis was used to summarize results across the 7 states and survival analysis to determine the effect of the delay on recidivism.
Results: Forty‐two percent of first offenders and 55% of multiple offenders convicted for DUI delay reinstatement for more than a year. For a third of the offenders, there were no records of their having reinstated within 5 years of becoming eligible. Both factors—more than one prior offense and the length of suspension imposed—were related to delay in reinstatement. Offenders who delayed reinstatement were more likely to recidivate both while they delayed before reinstating and after they reinstated.
Conclusions: DUI offenders who delay reinstatement after they become eligible are high‐risk drivers. Offenders who reinstate, however, have lower recidivism rates than those who do not. This suggests that encouraging reinstatement but with continued controls, as some states have provided through laws requiring interlocks as a condition of reinstatement, may be effective if they do not motivate extended delays.
► Deterrence and social-control theories are applied to DWI behavior. ► DWI 15-year outcomes were predicted by interviews conducted 10 years earlier. ► Narrow versions of theoretical models did not ...predict DWI behavior. ► Jail time moderates the association between prior DWI and current DWI behavior.
This study investigates the utility of deterrence and social-control theories for prospective prediction of driving-while-impaired (DWI) outcomes of first-time DWI offenders.
The sample consisted of a subset of 544 convicted first-time DWI offenders (N=337 females) who were interviewed 5 and 15 years after referral to a Screening Program in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. Variables collected at the 5-year (initial) interview were used in structural equation models to predict past 3-months, self-reported DWI at the 15-year follow-up (follow-up) interview. These variables represented domains defined by deterrence and social-control theories of DWI behavior, with one model corresponding to deterrence theory and one to social-control theory.
Both models fit the data. DWI jail time was positively related to perceived enforcement, which was negatively but not significantly related to self-reported DWI. Neither jail time for DWI nor perceived likelihood of arrest was linearly related to self-reported DWI at follow-up. Interactions between jail time and prior DWI behavior indicated relatively weaker associations between initial and 15-year DWI for those reporting more jail time.
Our prospective study demonstrated that for this convicted DWI offender cohort, classic formulations of deterrence and social-control theories did not account for DWI. However, results suggest that punishment may decrease the likelihood of DWI recidivism.
The study was undertaken to assess the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences on drunk-driving.
Driving records of a cohort of male and female twins (N = 17,360) from the ...Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry were examined. Structural equation models were used to estimate the magnitude of genetic and environmental effects on male and female phenotypes, and test for gender differences.
There were significant gender and age effects. Compared with females, males were five times more likely to engage in driving under the influence. Among persons aged 21-49 years, the risk for drunk-driving was eight times that for those aged 50+ years and five times greater than those ≤20 years. In both males and females, aged 21-49 years, a large proportion (57%) of the variance in drunk-driving was due to genetic factors and the remaining 43% due to individual specific environmental influences.
Drunk-driving is under significant genetic influence in both males and females. Our findings suggest that a different set of genes influence DUIs in men and women.
This study investigated whether subjective beliefs about the consequences of driving while intoxicated (DWI) differ by race/gender.
Beliefs affect driving behaviors and views of police/judicial ...fairness. The researchers compared risk perceptions of DWI using a survey of drinkers in eight cities in four states with actual arrest and conviction rates and fines from court data in the same cities.
With state arrest data as a benchmark, Black males were overly pessimistic about being stopped, whether or not actual drinking occurred, and attributed higher jail penalties to DWI conviction. That Black males overestimated jail sentences incurred by the general population suggests that they did not attribute higher jail penalties to racial bias. Arrest data did not reveal disparities in judicial outcomes following DWI arrest.
Blacks’ subjective beliefs about DWI consequences may reflect social experiences, which are not jurisdiction- or crime-specific; this is a challenge to policymakers aiming to deter DWI by changing statutes and enforcement.
If perception of bias exists despite no actual bias, a change in enforcement policy would not be effective, but a public relations campaign would be helpful in realigning beliefs.
► Drinking/driving (DWI) rates were higher for men than women, across races. ► Black men had higher subjective probabilities of stops and jail for DWI than white men. ► Responses imply blacks did not attribute differences in their beliefs to racial bias. ► Overall, actual DWI enforcement and judicial decisions did not differ by race. ► Patterns of misperceptions suggested weak transmission of deterrent signals.
This study examines the impact of the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program (MASEP), a court-mandated intervention program, on 3-year recidivism rates among first-time DUI offenders (i.e. ...those convicted of a first offense for driving under the influence of alcohol or another drug). It also examines whether a new version of the curriculum that incorporates activities to enhance motivation for change further ameliorates recidivism. Cox proportional hazard regression models are used to compare recidivism rates among DUI offenders who completed MASEP with those who did not complete or who failed to enroll in the program. Recidivism rates were also compared for MASEP participants across time periods during which curriculum revisions were introduced. The hazard of recidivism was lower for individuals who completed the program than for individuals who did not complete or did not enroll in the program. Recidivism rates were further reduced following the introduction of curriculum revisions. Attendance of court-mandated remedial intervention programs lower subsequent DUI arrests and program content is associated with lower rates.
This paper presents qualitative data from an in-depth interview study of 40 repeat drink drivers in Perth Western Australia to inform countermeasures for these high risk offenders.
Licence sanctions ...are effective countermeasures for most drink drivers but the small group of repeat offenders are less responsive. Many choose to drive whilst unlicensed as the probability of detection is low and the social and economic costs of not driving can be high. This undermines other drink drive countermeasures.
Most respondents who had had their licence suspended admitted to driving whilst under suspension. Employment and social factors were key themes emerging in respondents’ accounts of driving whilst under licence suspension.
Whilst a range of enforcement countermeasures are needed to deter drunk and unlicensed driving, this study suggests that where possible we aim to keep offenders within the system that consists of formal laws and informal social controls, rather than apply penalties in ways that undermine adherence to the law by increasing unlicensed driving. Allowing for interlock installation early in the driving suspension period, and allowing fines to offset cost of interlock installation and monitoring, may maximise community benefit and reduce unlicensed driving.
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