Traffic environment and demographic factors affecting impaired driving and crashes.

Introduction: Data availability has forced researchers to examine separately the role of alcohol among drivers who crashed and drivers who did not crash. Such a separation fails to account fully for the transition from impaired driving to an alcohol-related crash.

Method: In this study, we analyzed recent data to investigate how traffic-related environments, conditions, and drivers' demographics shape the likelihood of a driver being either involved in a crash (alcohol impaired or not) or not involved in a crash (alcohol impaired or not).

Language, income, education, and alcohol-related fatal motor vehicle crashes.

This paper investigates the role of race/ethnicity, language skills (a proxy for acculturation among Hispanics in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas), income, and education level on alcohol-related fatal motor vehicle crashes. Using the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), we confirmed previous state-based studies showing that high income and education levels have a protective influence on alcohol-related fatal motor vehicle crashes. We also confirmed that language proficiency/acculturation tends to increase the vulnerability of Hispanic women to alcohol-related fatalities.

Home smoking restrictions. Problems in classification.

Background: Evidence of the effectiveness of smoking restrictions in workplaces and other public places is creating awareness of the role of bans in private spaces. The purpose of this study was to examine who is affected by strict home smoking bans at the household level.

Methods: Using the 1998/1999 Tobacco Use Supplement to the U.

Alcohol involvement in burn, submersion, spinal cord, and brain injuries.

Background: Alcohol is involved in many injuries, but estimates of this involvement vary considerably. Most information pertains to deaths although most injuries are nonfatal.

Material/methods: The portion of fatal and nonfatal injuries involving alcohol was determined from a comprehensive Oklahoma surveillance system that tracks persons killed or hospitalized due to burns, submersions, spinal cord injuries (SCIs), and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).

Blood alcohol content (BAC)-negative victims in alcohol-involved injury incidents.

Aims: To understand better how often BAC-negative victims suffer fatal and non-fatal alcohol-involved injuries.

Design: We analyzed 1988-1993 data from Oklahoma surveillance systems that track all people killed or hospitalized due to burns, submersions and spinal cord injuries (SCIs) and investigate alcohol use by victims and any others who contributed to their injuries.

Measurements: Percentage of victims BAC-positive and percentage of victims BAC-negative in alcohol-involved incidents.