Citation

Wright NA, Lee LT. Accid. Anal. Prev. 2021; 161: e106358.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2021.106358

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the United States, about 28 lives are lost daily in motor vehicle accidents that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. While most states have enacted various traffic laws to address this phenomenon, little consensus exists on the causal impact of these laws in reducing alcohol-induced fatalities. This paper exploits quasi-random variation in state-level laws to estimate the causal effect of alcohol-related traffic laws on the frequency of fatal accidents. This is identified from the discontinuities in traffic laws among contiguous counties that are separated by a shared state border. We present robust evidence that the conventional approaches that are typically utilized in the literature may erroneously estimate the effectiveness of several alcohol-related laws.

Keywords: Ethanol impaired driving

Language: en

Keywords

Contiguous-counties design; Drunk-driving laws; Traffic fatalities