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Alcohol-related fatal crashes rise for young women
Alcohol is an increasingly important factor in the rising toll of fatal car crashes involving young women drivers, according to new research from the United States.
In 2007 alone, alcohol-related fatal car crashes accounted for almost a third of the total in the US.
Against that background, researchers analysed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on fatal road traffic collisions for the years 1995 to 2007 inclusive. They looked at the proportion of drivers whose blood samples had contained alcohol across five age-bands: 16; 17; 18; 19 to 20; and 21 to 24 years.
Blood alcohol levels were categorised as 0.01 to 0.07 g/dl, which is below the legal drink drive limit in the US; 0.08 to 0.14g/dl, which is at or above the legal drink drive limit; and 0.15 and above, at which level a driver has a 100-fold increased risk of a collision. In all, there were just short of 180,000 fatal car crashes among drivers aged 16 to 24 years during the study period.
Rates among young men fell year on year by 2.5 crashes per 100,000 of the population. They fell in all four age groups up to the age of 20 and remained the same for those aged 21-to-24 years between 1995 to 2007.
The rates among young women were much lower than those of their male peers in each of the years studied, but they did not follow the same patterns. Among 16-year-old women drivers, the rate fell by 0.8 per 100,000 of the population and remained the same for 17- and 18-year-olds. And it increased by 0.7 per 100,000 of the population among 19-year-olds and by 0.6 per 100,000 for those aged 21 to 24 years.
The increase in the proportion of young female drivers with a positive blood alcohol test involved in a fatal collision was also greater (3.1 per cent) than it was for young male drivers (1.2 per cent). The highest increase in fatal collisions was among drivers with a blood alcohol of 0.15g/dl or higher. This rose 2 per cent among women compared with 2.4 per cent among young men.
But the increase in the proportion of young drivers involved in fatal crashes with positive blood alcohol tests at all times of the week was greater among young women than it was among young men. This rose by 3.5 per cent on weekdays and 2.2 per cent at weekends among young women compared with 1.5 per cent and 0.4 per cent, respectively, among young men.
The authors point out that the gender patterns evident in this study mirror increasing trends in drug misuse among young women, possibly as a result of changing social and cultural norms.
(Source: IMT)