Identification and Testing of Countermeasures for Specific Alcohol Accident Types and Problems. Volume 2, General Driver Alcohol Problem

Ranney, Thomas A.; Gawron, Valerie J. · 1984 · ROSA P / United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Summary

This 1984 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) addresses the identification and testing of roadway countermeasures designed to mitigate accidents caused by alcohol-impaired drivers. The study was motivated by the need to understand the specific behavioral errors associated with alcohol impairment and to evaluate engineering solutions that could reduce these risks. The research focused on general drivers, identifying single-vehicle crashes, head-on collisions, and rear-end collisions as the primary accident types involving alcohol. The study proceeded in three phases: analyzing accident data and literature to define the problem, identifying prospective countermeasures, and empirically testing selected treatments. The empirical evaluation consisted of two experiments. Experiment I utilized an instrumented vehicle on a closed course to test the effects of simulated rumble strips and raised lane delineators on driver performance. Subjects were either sober or had consumed alcohol. Experiment II employed a driving simulator to assess the impact of continuous treatments (standard and wide edgelines) and spot treatments at curves (including post delineators, flashing beacons, chevron signs, and herringbone pavement markings) on drivers with varying blood alcohol concentrations. The study also reviewed data regarding alcohol involvement in heavy truck accidents, though this component relied largely on existing literature rather than new experimental data. The findings confirmed that alcohol significantly impaired driving performance, resulting in increased lane position errors, greater vehicle control variability, and reduced tracking ability. In Experiment I, the rumbling treatments showed positive but weak effects on driver performance; notably, the report cautions that more lane deviations occurred among sober drivers in the presence of rumble strips, a finding the authors did not fully explain. In Experiment II, the presence of edgelines yielded the most significant benefits, reducing measures of alcohol impairment by 30 to 46 percent for drivers with the highest alcohol levels. Wide edgelines provided additional, though non-significant, benefits. Conversely, the spot treatments for curves demonstrated relatively weak and equivocal effects. The study also found insufficient evidence to support a specific "fatigue" effect on driving performance, as physiological arousal data were too variable and behavioral results were inconsistent across experiments. The significance of this research lies in its identification of edgelines as a promising countermeasure for reducing alcohol-related driving errors, particularly in tracking and lane maintenance. However, the report highlights limitations in the data, such as incomplete statistical presentations for complex interactions in the simulator study and the weak evidence for rumble strips. The authors recommend further research and development, particularly regarding the implementation of edgelines and the need for more rigorous testing of other roadway modifications. The study underscores that while alcohol consistently degrades specific driving skills, certain passive roadway cues can partially mitigate these impairments.

Key finding

Edgeline presence reduced several measures of alcohol impairment by 30 to 46 percent for subject-motorists at the highest alcohol level.

Methodology

mixed_methods

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.

• alcohol
• perceptual countermeasures
• polydrug
• dui enforcement
• drowsy as impairment
• behavioral adaptation risk compensation

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
• Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data
• Methodological Resource: validation psychometrics