Special Accident Investigation Studies: The Role of Alcohol/Drug Involvement
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Summary
This paper reports on the first year of a special accident investigation study sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to analyze the role of alcohol and drug involvement in fatal motor vehicle accidents. The study was motivated by the need for statistically controlled data to support Alcohol Safety Action Projects (ASAPs) in Albuquerque, Baltimore, and Boston, as existing records on alcohol involvement were deemed inaccurate. The paper specifically details the pilot study conducted in Boston between November 1971 and June 1972. The research team investigated 50 fatal accidents occurring within the Boston ASAP area. The study focused on the driver designated as "at-fault" or principally responsible by law enforcement. Data collection utilized a multidisciplinary approach, including police reports, medical examiner findings, toxicology reports, and legal records. A key methodological component was the development of a "Human Factors Index" (HFI), derived from interviews with drivers (if alive), relatives, friends, and colleagues, to assess psychosocial, medical, and legal histories. The study excluded hit-and-run cases where the operator was not apprehended. Due to the small sample size, the analysis relied on descriptive statistics rather than complex inferential procedures. The results characterized a hypothetical "modal" operator as a Caucasian male, approximately 29 years old, unmarried, and employed in a skilled or semi-skilled manual position. Key findings indicated that 42% of the focal operators were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash. This figure varied by accident class: 62% in cases where the operator killed themselves, 53% where they killed others, and only 7% in pedestrian accidents. Among those involved with alcohol, 62% were clinically rated as problem drinkers, heavy social drinkers, or binge drinkers. Additionally, 60% of all operators exhibited chronic risk-taking behaviors, and 48% had prior arrests for reckless driving or driving to endanger. Drug use was also prevalent, with 34% having smoked marijuana and 30% having used street drugs. The authors conclude that while the alcohol involvement rate (42%) was lower than the national average of 50%, this was largely due to the inclusion of pedestrian accidents, where impairment rates were significantly lower. The study highlights that chronic risk-taking behaviors correlated more strongly with fatal accidents than alcohol indicators alone. These findings suggest that ASAP programs should expand their identification criteria to include problem drinkers and individuals with histories of reckless driving. The paper proposes a two-year continuation of the study to increase the sample size to 300 accidents and to introduce control groups, including non-ASAP fatals and drivers arrested for driving under the influence, to better isolate causal factors.
Key finding
42% of fatal accident drivers were under the influence of alcohol, while 60% exhibited chronic risk-taking behaviors.
Methodology
field_study
Sample size: 50
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.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
- incidence prevalence
- illicit drugs
- in depth crash investigation
- pre crash contributing factors
- causation analyses
- sex gender
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: crash risk outcomes, observational prevalence
- Methodological Resource: dataset resource