Results of the 2007 National Roadside Survey of Alcohol and Drug Use by Drivers [Traffic Safety Facts]

Compton, Richard; Berning, Amy · 2009 · ROSA P / United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Office of Behavioral Safety Research

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Summary

This report presents the findings of the 2007 National Roadside Survey (NRS) of Alcohol and Drug Use by Drivers, conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The study addresses the prevalence of alcohol and drug use among U.S. drivers, marking the first nationwide survey to include measures for potentially impairing drugs alongside traditional alcohol testing. This expansion was motivated by advancements in analytic toxicology and a 2005 pilot test that confirmed the feasibility of collecting oral fluid and blood samples from voluntary motorists. The research aims to provide national estimates of substance use to inform traffic safety policies and law enforcement training. The methodology involved a stratified random sample of drivers at 300 locations across the contiguous United States, utilizing the National Automotive Sampling System. Data were collected primarily on weekend nights, with a new inclusion of weekday daytime sessions. The survey included motorcycles, which were oversampled due to high crash involvement rates, while excluding commercial vehicles for logistical reasons. Of nearly 11,000 eligible drivers, 86% provided breath samples, 71% provided oral fluid samples, and 39% of nighttime drivers provided blood samples. Participation was voluntary and anonymous, with complex weighting schemes applied to derive national prevalence rates based on crash volume and selection probability. The results indicate a significant decline in alcohol-impaired driving. The percentage of weekend nighttime drivers with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at or above the legal limit of 0.08 g/dL dropped from 7.5% in 1973 to 2.2% in 2007, a 71% reduction. Male drivers were significantly more likely than females to have illegal BACs, and nighttime driving showed much higher impairment rates than daytime. Motorcycle riders were more than twice as likely as passenger car drivers to have illegal BACs. Regarding drugs, 16.3% of nighttime drivers tested positive for at least one potentially impairing drug using combined oral fluid and blood tests. The most commonly detected substances were marijuana (8.6%), cocaine (3.9%), and methamphetamine (1.3%). The significance of these findings lies in establishing the first national baseline for drug-impaired driving, though the report cautions that drug presence does not necessarily equate to impairment due to varying detection windows and individual metabolic differences. Unlike alcohol, where BAC levels correlate strongly with impairment, no such reliable thresholds exist for most drugs. Consequently, NHTSA is pursuing further research to link specific drugs and dosages to crash risk and driver performance. In the interim, the agency has expanded the Drug Evaluation and Classification program, training thousands of law enforcement officers to recognize drug impairment, and initiated a follow-on case-control study to determine the association between drug use and crash involvement.

Key finding

The percentage of drivers with blood alcohol concentrations at or above 0.08 g/dL declined by 71% from 1973 to 2007, and 16.3% of nighttime drivers tested positive for potentially impairing drugs in the first national survey of its kind.

Methodology

naturalistic

Sample size: 10909

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• dui enforcement
• illicit drugs
• alcohol
• polydrug
• drowsy as impairment
• cannabis

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence, crash risk outcomes
• Methodological Resource: dataset resource