This paper examines the impacts and implications of New Jersey’s blood alcohol concentration legislation, aimed at reducing crash fatalities caused by driving under the influence of alcohol.
Most research, drawing on deterrence and rational choice models of social action, examines the effects of reductions of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits to secure drunk driving convictions on the total volume of crash fatalities. This paper expands on that work by investigating the impact of New Jersey’s BAC legislation on total and disaggregated crash fatalities. The results from the interrupted times series analyses show that reducing the BAC limit to 0.8 has no effect on total or driver fatalities, however, it has a negative and lasting effect on passenger fatalities. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research. Publisher Abstract Provided