A Profile of Fatal Accidents Involving Alcohol
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Summary
This 1977 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) synthesizes findings from four multidisciplinary accident investigation studies conducted between 1971 and 1975 in Boston, Baltimore, Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque. These cities were selected because they hosted Alcohol Safety Action Programs (ASAPs), federal demonstration projects designed to combat alcohol-related highway safety issues. The primary objective was to develop a comprehensive profile of fatal accidents involving alcohol and to identify the characteristics of drivers responsible for such crashes, thereby informing future countermeasure strategies. The research employed distinct experimental designs in each location, utilizing control groups for comparison. In Boston, investigators analyzed 267 fatal accidents against a control group of 801 non-accident drivers, using a Human Factors Index to collect demographic, psychosocial, and legal data. Baltimore compared 76 fatally injured drivers with 79 moderately injured drivers in matched collisions, focusing on personality traits via psychosocial questionnaires. Oklahoma City compared fatal accidents in an ASAP community against those in Tulsa, which lacked such a program. Albuquerque analyzed 220 alcohol-related crashes of varying severity, comparing alcohol-involved drivers with non-involved drivers in the same incidents. Data collection methods included police reports, accident reconstruction, blood alcohol concentration (BAC) testing, and in-depth interviews. The aggregated results revealed consistent patterns across all four studies. Alcohol-involved fatal accidents were predominantly single-vehicle incidents; in multi-vehicle crashes, the alcohol-involved vehicle was typically the striking one. These accidents occurred primarily between 8:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. on weekends and involved older, poorly maintained vehicles. Speeding or traveling too fast for conditions was a frequent contributing factor. The typical driver responsible for an alcohol-involved fatal crash was a male aged 20–35 with no more than a high school education. He was likely single, separated, or divorced, and often had a history of previous DWI arrests, multiple speeding violations, or a suspended/revoked license. Psychosocial assessments identified these drivers as heavy social or problem drinkers, with personality traits such as belligerence, impulsiveness, and verbal expansiveness significantly higher than the general population. In Boston, a discriminant function analysis using variables like alcohol use patterns and previous arrests correctly classified alcohol involvement in 74% of cases. The study concludes that this aggregate profile should not be used for primary screening of licensing applicants but rather as a secondary screening tool for drivers already within the legal system, such as those arrested for DWI or multiple speeding violations. The findings suggest that identifying these specific risk factors can help target appropriate remedial and rehabilitative countermeasures. The report emphasizes that drivers possessing these characteristics are disproportionately represented in serious crashes, indicating a significantly increased risk of becoming automobile fatalities.
Key finding
Alcohol-involved fatal accidents are significantly overrepresented as single-vehicle crashes occurring between 8:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. on weekends, involving male drivers aged 20-35 with prior traffic violations.
Methodology
mixed_methods
Sample size: 1137
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes, observational prevalence