DRUNK DRIVING LEGISLATION AND TRAFFIC FATALITIES: NEW EVIDENCE ON BAC 08 LAWS

Donald G. Freeman

Contemporary Economic Policy, 2007, vol. 25, issue 3, 293-308

Abstract: This article reexamines the effectiveness of blood alcohol content (BAC) laws in reducing traffic fatalities. Differences‐in‐differences estimators of U.S. state‐level data with standard errors corrected for autocorrelation show no evidence that lowering the BAC limits to 0.08 g/dL reduced fatality rates, either in total or in crashes likely to be alcohol related, or in states that passed BAC 08 in laws either in advance of or in response to federal pressure. Other legislations, including administrative license revocation and primary seat belt laws, are found effective in reducing fatalities in all specifications. Endogeneity tests using event analyses confirm the differences‐in‐differences estimates. (JEL I18, K32)

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7287.2007.00039.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:25:y:2007:i:3:p:293-308

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... 5-7287&ref=1465-7287

Access Statistics for this article

Contemporary Economic Policy is currently edited by Brad R. Humphreys

More articles in Contemporary Economic Policy from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().