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Drink, death, and driving: Do blood alcohol content limit reductions improve road safety?
Author(s) -
Cooper Benjamin,
Gehrsitz Markus,
McIntyre Stuart G.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.4016
Subject(s) - blood alcohol , blood alcohol content , alcohol content , alcohol , limit (mathematics) , traffic accident , case fatality rate , environmental health , medicine , transport engineering , toxicology , poison control , food science , environmental science , injury prevention , engineering , mathematics , chemistry , biology , biochemistry , mathematical analysis , population
This study exploits a natural experiment in Scotland where the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) limit was reduced from 0.8 to 0.5 mg per 100 ml of blood while staying constant in all other parts of the United Kingdom. Using a difference‐in‐differences design, we find that this change in the BAC level had no impact on either traffic accident or fatality rates.