Deterring the drinking driver: The Stockton experience

✍ Scribed by Robert B. Voas; Janet M. Hause

• Book ID: 102977465
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 928 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-4575
• DOI: 10.1016/0001-4575(87)90027-3

✦ Synopsis

effectiveness of drunk driving enforcement patrols is generally assumed. However, few adequate evaluations are available in the traffic safety literature. The U.S. Department of Transportation funded a special program in Stockton, a city with a population of 120,CKKl in the central valley of California, to test the effectiveness of special drunk driving patrols on weekend evenings, applied within a setting in which no other major alcohol safety programs were present. The objective of this effort was to determine the effectiveness of a "traditional" approach to enforcing driving while impaired (DWI) laws; one in which innovative procedures such as sobriety checkpoints were not used. The results indicated that nighttime collisions in Stockton were reduced during the three and a half year period of the special enforcement program.