Do Stricter Penalties or Media Publicity Reduce Alcohol Consumption by Drivers?

Anindya Sen ()

Canadian Public Policy, 2005, vol. 31, issue 4, 359-380

Abstract: A decline in drinking and driving could be due to stricter penalties as well as enhanced media publicity, which increases public knowledge of drinking and driving laws. However, most research fails to control for the effects of increased media coverage. Employing a unique dataset of the blood alcohol content (BAC) levels of fatally injured drivers in Canada from 1982 to 1992, I find that both stricter penalties and an increase in the number of newspaper articles related to drinking and driving are significantly correlated with a reduced likelihood of exceeding the legal BAC limit of 0.08 percent. This is a consistent finding from different OLS regressions, and suggests that the enactment of sterner punishment must be supplemented with public education programs.

Date: 2005
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Working Paper: Do Stricter Penalties or Media Publicity Reduce Alcohol Consumption By Drivers? (2002)
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