Alcohol and Highway Safety: Screening and Brief Intervention for Alcohol Problems as a Community Approach to Improving Traffic Safety

Higgins-Biddle, John; Dilonardo, Joan · 2013 · ROSA P / United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Office of Behavioral Safety Research

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This report, published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), addresses the challenge of reducing alcohol-impaired driving by targeting drivers who engage in risky drinking but are not arrested or convicted for driving while intoxicated (DWI). The authors note that only a small fraction of impaired drivers are apprehended; estimates suggest a 1 in 200 probability of arrest for drivers with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .10 g/dL or higher, and only 23% of alcohol-positive crash victims are convicted. Consequently, traditional criminal justice interventions miss the majority of at-risk drivers. The paper proposes Screening and Brief Intervention (SBI) as a community-based countermeasure to identify and assist these individuals before they cause harm, leveraging the "prevention paradox" where normative drinkers, though individually lower risk, contribute disproportionately to crash totals due to their large numbers. The report reviews the development, methods, and efficacy of SBI, which consists of systematic screening followed by brief counseling. Screening is primarily conducted via self-report instruments rather than clinical observation or biological markers, which are less reliable or practical for routine use. The Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) is identified as the gold standard, with shorter variants like the AUDIT-C and single-question screens offering efficient alternatives for busy medical settings. Brief interventions involve providing personalized feedback, medical advice, and motivational support to encourage reduced consumption. The report also notes that SBI principles are being applied to illicit drug use, given the high prevalence of co-occurring substance use among impaired drivers. The findings indicate that over a quarter-century of research demonstrates SBI’s efficacy in reducing alcohol consumption and related harms among hazardous and harmful drinkers. Studies show that even brief advice, lasting as little as five minutes, can produce statistically significant reductions in drinking. The report highlights that SBI is effective across various settings, including primary care, emergency departments, and trauma centers. It further details the growing adoption of SBI by major federal agencies and professional organizations, such as the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Medical Association, which have endorsed screening and intervention protocols. The significance of this work lies in shifting traffic safety strategies from solely punitive measures to preventive healthcare approaches. By integrating SBI into medical and community settings, stakeholders can address the large population of risky drinkers who fall outside the criminal justice system. The report concludes that widespread implementation of SBI offers a viable method to decrease the prevalence of drinking and driving, thereby reducing alcohol-related crashes and injuries. It emphasizes the need for continued dissemination of these tools and policy support to ensure that at-risk individuals receive appropriate assistance before their behavior results in fatal or non-fatal crashes.

Key finding

Screening and Brief Intervention programs provide a viable community-based approach to identifying and assisting high-risk drinkers who are not arrested, thereby potentially reducing alcohol-impaired driving crashes.

Methodology

review

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).

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

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).

• Applied Guidance: countermeasure evaluation