OBJECTIVE Efforts were made to examine drinking-driving recidivism in relation to arrest context and subsequent case disposition. Three specific hypotheses were tested, regarding blood alcohol concentration, time of arrest and sanctions. METHOD Complete 1989, 1990 and 1991 traffic ticket files from the New York State police were the baseline data for the study. RESULTS Analyses show that hi...

CONTEXT Motor vehicle-related injury is the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 1 to 24 years in the United States. Approximately 24% of child traffic deaths involve alcohol. OBJECTIVE To examine characteristics of crashes involving child passenger deaths and injuries associated with drinking drivers to identify opportunities for prevention. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTIC...

In order to identify clues to forensic pathologist's classification of suicide, the forensic files of 100 consecutive cases of suicide, and 22 cases of undetermined manner of death, were analysed. Some specific causes of death, suicidal communication and other circumstantial evidence suggesting suicidal intent explained all but three classifications. Problematic cases concerned death by poisoni...

This review concerns important events and trends in the evolution of chemical tests for alcohol intoxication on two continents; Europe and North America. In particular, the pioneer workers in this field and their major contributions to forensic alcohol analysis are emphasized. Quantitative methods for the determination of alcohol in blood, breath, and urine appeared early in the twentieth centu...

The objective of the study was to assess the association between high blood alcohol levels and fatal victims of traffic accidents in the Brazilian Federal District, in 2005. A total of 442 casualties (163 pedestrians, 84 victims of overturns, and 195 of collisions) were studied. Blood alcohol concentration was analyzed in 238 cases (53.7%). Most victims were young males, aged between 18 and 35 ...

BACKGROUND Some laboratory studies find that driving is impaired even at blood alcohol content (BAC)=0.01%. However, no real-world traffic studies have investigated whether minimally 'buzzed' drivers (BAC=0.01%) are more likely to be blamed for a crash than are the sober drivers they collide with. PURPOSE To determine whether official blame for a crash increases significantly at BAC=0.01%. ...

OBJECTIVE The authors examined whether alcohol-related negative consequences decreased among students exposed to an intervention. PARTICIPANTS Beginning in 1999, approximately 2,500 randomly selected undergraduates from a 4-year US university annually participated in a Web-based survey over 6 years. METHODS The educational intervention used social norms initiatives. Main outcome measures in...

BACKGROUND Blood alcohol concentration data that were previously obtained from 34 healthy Japanese subjects with limited sampling times were reanalyzed. Characteristics of the data were that the concentrations were obtained from only the early part of the time-concentration curve. OBJECTIVE To explore significant covariates for the population pharmacokinetic analysis of alcohol by incorporati...

Blood samples from 2,500 injured drivers were analysed for alcohol, cannabinoids (measured by the presence of THC), benzodiazepines and stimulants. The relationship between the prevalence and concentration of drugs and the culpability of the driver was examined using an objective method for assessing culpability. There were no significant differences between males and females with respect to cu...

Therapeutic drug concentrations measured in plasma are of limited value as reference intervals for interpretation in post-mortem (PM) toxicology. In this study, drug concentration distributions were studied in PM femoral venous blood from 57 903 Finnish autopsy cases representing all causes of death during an 11-year period. Cause-of-death information was obtained from death certificates issued...