Deterring The Drinking Driver

Policing and Punishing the Drinking Driver is at one level about the impact of specific drinking-driving countermeasures (punishments imposed by courts on convicted offenders and random breath testing) in a particular place (New South Wales, Australia) in two particular years (1972 and 1983). At another level, however, the research reported herein is concerned with general questions of deterrence, and with the impact of the criminal justice system on the perception and behavior of a broad cross-section of the population. In contrast to much of the research in the drink-drive field, the research questions concentrate on the psychological and sociological processes whereby behavior is altered in the short-term as the result of a massive legal intervention or as the result of the routine imposition of legal punishments.

Social Control of the Drinking Driver lays the groundwork for a much needed integration of methods, principles, and priorities. Law, criminology, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, public policy -- the disciplines concerned with the problem of drinking and driving are many and varied, and research crosses national boundaries as well. Drawing on fourteen specialists and surveying the situations in nine countries, this book presents a comprehensive statement of current knowledge about drunken driving and its control. - Back cover.

Discusses the Surgeon General's Workshop on Drunk Driving; research on and prevention of drinking and driving as well as alcohol-drug interactions; use of deterrent laws, treatment versus deterrence, and impersonal prevention. Charts, graphs, black and white photos.

The author of this book argues that drunk driving is more than just a criminal issue. He offers a practical approach to the problem of drunk driving, one that combines criminal deterence with other efforts to reduce the number of deaths caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol.

Preventing Drunk Driving shows what is being done today, in research and practice, to reduce impaired driving and the fatalities and injuries it produces and to curtail the spread of this tragic social epidemic. In this informative book, you’ll discover how current research and prevention programs are increasing the success of designated driver programs. You’ll also find out how communities, friends, and experts are making drinkers aware of their levels of intoxication and discouraging them from driving to keep the roads safer. You’ll see when intervention works, when it doesn’t, and how you can be most effective as a citizen in the fight against impaired driving deaths along your own stretch of the world’s highways and city streets. In Preventing Drunk Driving, you’ll get up-to-date data on how researchers are identifying the most dangerous drunk driving recidivists. Also, you’ll see how increased study and research have led to theoretical models of intervention, assessments of the usefulness of vehicle interlock programs, and the use of mapping to target offenders most at risk. Most importantly, you’ll learn: the results of experiments designed to test methods of increasing designated driving how census-tract mapping can target communities prone to DWI offenses the benefits and limitations of vehicle-interlock devices for the prevention of recidivism how interveners may improve their chances of stopping an impaired person from getting behind the wheel ways that blood alcohol concentration (BAC) feedback stations can reduce DUI incidents“Give me the keys.” “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” These are all sayings we’ve heard--but what are the scientific facts about impaired driving and its prevention in our local communities and neighborhoods? Preventing Drunk Driving analyzes the societal ill of driving under the influence of alcohol and its related death toll from a wide variety of angles.