Underreporting of Driver Alcohol Involvement in United States Police and Hospital Records: Capture-Recapture Estimates

This paper reports on a study of the underreporting of driver alcohol involvement in police and hospital records in the United States. The authors investigated what portion of US nonfatal crashes are alcohol-involved and how well police and hospitals detect any alcohol involvement that may be present. They use a capture-recapture model to estimate alcohol involvement from levels detected by police and hospitals and the extent of detection overlap. The authors analyzed 550,933 Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System driver records from 2006–2008 police crash report censuses. These reports were probabilistically linked to hospital inpatient and emergency department (ED) discharge censuses for seven states: Connecticut, Kentucky (admissions only), Maryland, Nebraska, New York, South Carolina, and Utah. The authors also computed national estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) General Estimates System (GES). They found that nationally an estimated 7.5% of drivers in nonfatal crashes and 12.9% of nonfatal crashes were alcohol-involved. The authors note that crashes often involve multiple drivers but rarely are two drivers alcohol-involved. Police correctly identified an estimated 32% of alcohol-involved drivers in non-fatal crashes including 48% in injury crashes. In contrast, hospitals reported 28% of involvement for ED cases and 51% for admitted cases. Underreporting varied widely between states. Police alcohol reporting completeness rose with police-reported driver injury severity. At least one system reported 62% of alcohol involvement. The authors conclude that police and hospitals need to communicate better about alcohol involvement. Despite the proven effectiveness of brief alcohol intervention, EDs rarely detect, much less intervene with crash-involved drinking drivers.

• Record URL:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3503413/
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/19432461
• Corporate Authors:

  Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM)

  P.O. Box 4176
  Barrington, IL  United States  60011-4176
• Authors:
  • Miller, Ted R
  • Gibson, Rekaya
  • Zaloshnja, Eduard
  • Blincoe, Lawrence J
  • Kindelberger, John
  • Strashny, Alexander
  • Thomas, Andrea
  • Ho, Shiu
  • Bauer, Michael J
  • Sperry, Sarah
  • Peng, Justin
  • Singleton, Michael
  • Smith, Tracy J
  • Zhang, Ying
• Conference:
  • 56th Annual Scientific Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine
  • Location: Seattle Washington
  • Date: 2012-10-14 to 2012-10-17
• Publication Date: 2012-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 87–96
• Monograph Title: Annals of Advances in Automotive Medicine. 56th Annual Scientific Conference, Seattle, Washington, October 14-17, 2012
• Serial:
  • Annals of Advances in Automotive Medicine
  • Volume: 56
  • Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM)
  • ISSN: 1943-2461

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alcohol use; Automobile drivers; Crash data; Crash injuries; Crash records; Drunk driving; Hospital emergency rooms; Injury severity; Medical records; Police reports; Traffic law enforcement
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor; I84: Personal Injuries;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01482996
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 3 2013 9:26AM