II. BACKGROUND

In 2003, Connecticut launched a statewide impaired-driving publicity and enforcement campaign.  This represents the first time Connecticut expended substantial resources for both media and enforcement in its efforts to reduce impaired driving and ultimately alcohol-related injury and fatal crashes.  The initiative was a test of NHTSA’s impaired-driving high-visibility enforcement model, which includes (1) paid and earned media in support of (2) statewide high-intensity enforcement crackdowns and (3) planned, sustained enforcement efforts between crackdowns.  The high-visibility enforcement component included two major crackdowns with sustained enforcement between crackdowns.  The two enforcement crackdowns covered the Independence Day and Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday periods.  NHTSA’s model focuses on crackdowns that cover 85 percent of the State’s populations and involve high-visibility sobriety checkpoints during three weekends (16 days) of these holiday periods.  Public awareness efforts in NHTSA’s model involve State earned media, State-funded paid media, and NHTSA-funded paid media.  The model’s paid and earned media focuses on raising awareness of the enforcement efforts.  The campaign media visual image is of a young man being handcuffed and assisted into the back seat of a police car during a DWI arrest.  The national campaign media message focuses foremost on enforcement. 

Connecticut diverted highway funds from the Federal Highway Administration, as required, for highway safety programs directed at impaired driving due to Connecticut’s lack of an open container law and a repeat DWI offender law that satisfied the Federal Government’s requirements.  The Connecticut Department of Transportation Division of Highway Safety committed these funds for 2003 to a statewide impaired-driving publicity and enforcement campaign based on NHTSA’s model.  The campaign focused on sobriety checkpoints as the most effective highly visible enforcement method.