National and State Surveys of Alcohol Targets of Opportunity

Samenvatting

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has a central role in the national effort to reduce motor vehicle related traffic injuries and deaths. A core priority of NHTSA is to reduce the number of alcohol-related fatalities. Since 1999, several states were awarded cooperative agreements by NHTSA to demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of traffic safety programs that combine increased law enforcement efforts with enhanced publicity. These states were selected because of their potential for reducing the substantial number or percentage of alcohol-related fatalities occurring each year within their state. During the next few years NHTSA will be supporting additional state programmatic efforts to reduce the number of alcohol- related crashes. One means of determining whether these programs are successful is to conduct periodic telephone surveys of the public both prior to and after program implementation to assess changes in drivers' attitudes and behavior regarding drinking and driving after drinking. It would also be anticipated that states implementing such programs should show larger and more positive changes in attitudes and behavior as compared to a nationa