Citation

Desapriya EBR, Fujiwara T, Dutt N, Arason N, Pike I. Asia Pac. J. Public Health 2012; 24(5): 776-785.

Affiliation

University of British Columbia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1010539511404398

PMID

21527435

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Many studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between alcohol availability and traffic crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers. The present analysis focuses on the evaluation of the impact of alcohol availability on the Japanese population by comparing fatal and nonfatal motor vehicle crash rates before and after implementation of the alcohol deregulation policy in 1994. Participants and method. Poisson regression with robust standard error was used to model the before-to-after change in incidence rate ratios (IRRs) in the population. To control for potential confounders, per capita alcohol consumption, unemployment rate, and vehicle miles travelled (VMT) were also added to the model. The exponents of the fitted coefficients are equivalent to the IRRs. RESULTS: Implementation of the policy deregulating alcohol sales and production did not appear to increase traffic fatalities and other traffic crashes in Japan. In the overall study results, nighttime fatalities were reduced statistically significantly by 6% since the implementation of the alcohol deregulation policy in 1994. Discussion. Contrary to previous research, the findings of this study demonstrated lower rates of fatalities and higher compliance with alcohol-related driving legislation. Further well-designed, nonaligned studies on alcohol availability and traffic fatalities in other countries are urgently needed.

Language: en