Alcohol - Drinking and Driving Among Adults

Why Is This Important?

Adult drinking and driving is a precursor to alcohol-related motor vehicle crash injury and death. Any drinking and driving is dangerous (i.e., associated with an elevated risk of crash and injury), but driving after binge drinking (which is defined as a level of drinking likely to lead to a 0.08 BAC) is particularly risky. Unfortunately, binge drinkers are much more likely to report driving after drinking than non-binge drinkers. For example, in 2014, only 1.1% of adults reported driving after drinking too much; but 7.0% of binge drinkers reported engaging in this risky behavior in the past 30 days, compared to only 0.1% of non-binge drinkers.

Definition

Drinking and driving is defined as adults who report that they drove after having "perhaps too much to drink" at least once in past 30 days The drinking and driving question is only asked in even years.

Data Sources

• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey Data, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, together with New Mexico Department of Health, Injury and Behavioral Epidemiology Bureau.
  (https://www.nmhealth.org/about/erd/ibeb/brfss/)
• U.S. data source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Prevalence and Trends Data.
  (https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/brfssprevalence)

How the Measure is Calculated

Evidence-based Practices

The Community Guide outlines evidence-based strategies for the prevention of excessive alcohol use and alcohol-related motor vehicle injury: https://www.thecommunityguide.org/topic/motor-vehicle-injury.

Other Objectives

Substance Abuse Epidemiology Report Indicator

Available Services

Doctors, nurses and other health professionals should screen all adult patients and counsel those who drink too much to drink less. This is called alcohol screening and brief intervention (A-SBI). A-SBI can reduce how much alcohol a person drinks on an occasion by 25%. A-SBI is recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), the Community Preventive Services Task Force (Community Guide), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). For more information on A-SBI, please the CDC vital signs website: www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/alcohol-screening-counseling/index.html

More Resources

The New Mexico Department of Health Substance Abuse Epidemiology Section has New Mexico-specific reports, resources and publications, available at: nmhealth.org/about/erd/ibeb/sap. CDC Alcohol Program has fact sheets, online tool kits, data and recently published literature, available at: www.cdc.gov/alcohol. The CDC also publishes the Prevention Status Reports (PSR), which highlight, for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the status of public health policies and practices designed to address important public health problems and concerns. The 2013 PSR for alcohol-related harms can be found at: www.cdc.gov/psr/2013/alcohol/index.html. The Community Preventive Services Task Force reviews research and makes recommendations to help communities answer the question "what works?" Community Guide recommendations for preventing excessive alcohol consumption can be found at: www.thecommunityguide.org/alcohol.