I. INTRODUCTION
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, 2003) reported that the number of alcohol-related fatalities increased from 16,653 in 2000 to 17,524 in 2002. An alcohol-related fatality occurs when there is a crash in which someone dies and where it is determined that at least one active road user involved in the crash has a BAC >.00 grams per deciliter. An active road user is one who could have caused the crash; this includes drivers, pedestrians, and pedalcyclists. Passengers are not active road users. Connecticut’s number of alcohol-related fatalities remained essentially constant from 1992 to 2002 with 144 fatalities in 1992 and 140 in 2002. Figure 1 shows the lack of change in the trend that followed a decade of consistent decreases in the number of alcohol-related fatalities beginning in 1982. Also, the percentage of alcohol-related fatalities (50.6%) out of all crash fatalities (312) during 2001 was higher than the national percentage (41.4%) and was also higher than the other New England States (45.9%) of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire.
Figure 1. Connecticut Number of Alcohol-Related Fatalities from 1982-2002.
Effective efforts to reduce impaired driving include highly visible enforcement, specifically sobriety checkpoints, and publicity about the enforcement. Sobriety checkpoints along with an enforcement-based media message have been effective at reducing alcohol-related crashes at both the local level (Wells, Preusser, and Williams, 1991) and statewide level (Lacey, Jones, and Smith, 1999).
Connecticut Department of Transportation data indicates that for 2001, 55 percent of the drinking drivers who were at fault in a crash were between the ages of 20 and 39. Eighty percent of those drivers were male. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data from 2000 through June 2003 indicates that men 21 to 34 years old were involved as active road users (i.e., drivers, pedestrians, or pedal cyclists) in crashes resulting in 45 percent of the State’s alcohol-related fatalities although, according to the U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, they account for just 11 percent of Connecticut’s driving age population (i.e., 16 or older). While enforcement efforts target all drinking drivers, Connecticut and NHTSA have focused their media efforts on increasing the awareness of men 21 to 34 years old about the enforcement because of their overrepresentation in alcohol-related fatal crashes.