There is an exponential increase in the relative risk for a traffic accident with increasing blood alcohol levels. Even a blood-alcohol level at the upper legal limit for driving is associated with a relative risk of 2.7. Thus even within the range of legal blood alcohol levels there is an increasing risk of accidents with increasing blood-alcohol levels. Clearly higher levels markedly increase the relative risk of traffic accidents.
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Relative Risk for a Crash Increases Exponentially with Blood Alcohol
At the current legal blood alcohol level, the risk of a car crash is more than 2.5 times the risk without alcohol.14,985 drivers (4,919 involved in crashes of all severities and 10,066 control drivers matched for location, time of day, and day of week as crash) from Long Beach, CA and Ft. Lauderdale, FL were part of a case control study to investigate the relationship between blood alcohol level and risk of crashing. Relative risks were adjusted for covariates (age, gender, drinking variables, marital status, education) and sources of bias (different non-participation rate between cases and controls, missing covariate data). (Constructed from data in Compton, R.P. et al. Crash risk of alcohol impaired driving. Proceedings of 16th International Conference on Alcohol, Drugs, and Traffic Safety, Montreal, Canada, 2002) ©2008 NBEP
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