IDENTIFICATION AND MONITORING OF ALCOHOL IN TRAFFIC CRASHES THROUGH MASS DATA SYSTEMS

There are three sources of information on involvement of alcohol in traffic crashes: police accident reports which give results of breath tests of controllers of vehicles involved in traffic crashes; reports from Clerks of Petty Sessions on blood alcohol information for those people killed in traffic crashes for whom a Coroner requests a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) analysis; reports obtained directly from the Health Commission's Division of Analytical Laboratories (DAL), where most post mortem blood samples are analysed. The last of these three sources is considered to be the most comprehensive with respect to alcohol information. Analyses were performed on the 701 fatalities for which DAL data were available. The results of these analyses indicate that there were significant differences in BAC for age and sex of fatalities. However, no significant difference in BAC was detected for class of road user, survival time of fatality after crash or month of crash. Simple curves such as log-normal and Pearson distributions were fitted to the data. Mixed distributions such as sums and products of distributions were also fitted. The mixed distributions gave the best fit to the data, as would be expected.

• Corporate Authors:

  New South Wales Traffic Authority, Australia

  Traffic Accident Research Unit
  Rosebery, New South Wales 2018,   Australia 
• Authors:
  • Goldsmith, H
  • Kearns, I
• Publication Date: 1982-7

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: n.p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age; Blood alcohol levels; Data analysis; Data collection; Distributions (Statistics); Fatalities; Gender; Mathematical analysis; Traffic crashes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Data sources
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00393614
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Report/Paper Numbers: RN 6/82, HS-037 516
• Files: HSL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
• Created Date: Apr 29 1985 12:00AM