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Drinking and Driving in Western Australia: Perceptions of Practices, Priorities and Preventives
Author(s) -
Loxley Wendy,
Saunders Bill,
BlazeTemple Debra,
Binns Colin
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
australian journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1839-4655
pISSN - 0157-6321
DOI - 10.1002/j.1839-4655.1990.tb00879.x
Subject(s) - project commissioning , perception , publishing , politics , advertising , suicide prevention , environmental health , political science , psychology , poison control , business , medicine , law , neuroscience
If politics is the art of the possible, then determining what the public will tolerate is an important step in the design of prevention strategies. In this random survey of 1205 residents of country and urban areas in Western Australia, attitudes towards drinking and driving, drink‐driving behaviour, and opinions of countermeasures were examined. Drink‐driving was seen as an important issue for the community and there was a perception that something needed to be done. Drinking and driving was a well‐established behaviour, but there was evidence that for many people ‘other’ people constitute the drink‐driving problem. There were popular and unpopular preventives, but, interestingly, those that were deemed popular were often believed to be less effective than those that were less popular. The policy implications of these findings are considered, particularly in the light of the current implementation of random breath testing in Western Australia.