Citation

Vingilis ER, Stoduto G, Kapur BM, Mclellan BA. Proc. Int. Counc. Alcohol Drugs Traffic Safety Conf. 1993; 1993: 965-971.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, The author(s) and the Council, Publisher International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper presents some results of a large-scale crash study, one of whose aims was to describe the role of alcohol and other drugs in seriously injured motor vehicle crash (MVC) victims. It did this by examining the differences between those testing positive for blood alcohol and/or other drugs, and those testing negative, with respect to demographic, injury and crash characteristics. Drivers were selected for investigation, to allow for: (1) clearer analyses of associations between alcohol and/or drug consumption and study measures; (2) comparison with past researches that concentrated on drivers. The study sample included all MVC victims admitted to the Regional Trauma Unit at a health centre in Ontario, Canada. Data were collected prospectively from medical charts and police MVC reports, and each patient's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was routinely measured on admission. Data were available for 854 consecutive MVC driver and passenger admissions, including 596 drivers. BAC data were available for 543 drivers. 35.5% of these drivers had positive BACs; 65% of them were found to be over the legal limit on admission, and 87% were estimated to have been above it at crash time. 41.3% of the drivers were positive for at least one drug, and 16.5% for at least one drug in combination with alcohol.