Associations of repeated high alcohol use with unsafe driving behaviors, traffic offenses, and traffic crashes among young drivers: Findings from the New Zealand Drivers Study
To describe self-reported high alcohol use at each of the three licensing stages of graduated driver licensing and its relationship to drink-driving behaviours, intentional risky driving, aggressive driving, alcohol traffic offences, non-alcohol traffic offences, and traffic crashes.
The New Zealand Drivers Study (NZDS) is a multistage, prospective cohort study of newly licensed drivers interviewed at all three stages of the graduated driver licensing system: learner (baseline), restricted (intermediate) and full licence. At each stage alcohol use was self-reported using the AUDIT-C, with high alcohol use defined as a score of ≥4 for males and ≥3 for females. Socio-demographic and personality data were obtained at the baseline interview. Alcohol-related, intentional risky, and aggressive driving behaviours were self-reported following each licence stage. Traffic crashes and offences were identified from Police records. Crashes were also self-reported.
26% (n = 397) reported no high alcohol use, 22% at one licence stage, 30% at two stages, and 22% at three stages. Poisson regression results (unadjusted and adjusted) showed the number of stages where high alcohol use was reported was significantly associated with each of the outcomes. For most outcomes, and especially the alcohol-involved outcomes, the relative risk increased with the number of stages of high alcohol use.
We found that high alcohol use was common among young newly licensed drivers and those who repeatedly reported high alcohol use were at a significantly higher risk of unsafe driving behaviours. Recently introduced zero BAC should help to address this problem, but other strategies are required to target persistent offenders.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 September 2016.
All research outputs
#20,764,476
of 26,367,306 outputs
Outputs from Traffic Injury Prevention
#850
of 1,440 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#310,926
of 428,213 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Traffic Injury Prevention
#17
of 30 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,367,306 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 18th percentile – i.e., 18% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,440 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.9. This one is in the 38th percentile – i.e., 38% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 428,213 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 23rd percentile – i.e., 23% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 30 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
