National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month December 1998
Persons who drive while impaired by alcohol or other drugs
pose a public health hazard to themselves and others. During 1997,
alcohol-related motor-vehicle crashes resulted in 16,189 deaths in
the United States (1). During 1987 1997, the proportion of all
traffic fatalities that were alcohol-related decreased by 24% (from
51.0% to 38.6%) (1). During the same period, the rate of
alcohol-related motor-vehicle deaths decreased 39%, from 9.8 to 6.0
per 100,000 persons (2,3). The national health objective for 2000
for alcohol-related motor-vehicle deaths is 5.5 per 100,000
persons. A draft of the national health objectives for 2010 for
impaired driving are available for public comment through December
15, 1998, at the Healthy People 2010 World-Wide Web site,
http://web.health.gov/healthypeople/1998.htm.
December has been designated National Drunk and Drugged
Driving Prevention Month by the National Drunk and Drugged Driving
Prevention Month Coalition, a nationwide public/private sector
coalition for the prevention of crashes related to impaired
driving. Additional information about National Drunk and Drugged
Driving Prevention Month is available from the Impaired Driving
Division, Office of Traffic Injury Control Programs (NTS-11),
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 400 7th Street, SW,
Washington, DC 20590; telephone (202) 366-9588; or World-Wide Web
site http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/outreach/safesobr/17qp/ -
index.html.
References
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Traffic safety
facts 1997: alcohol. Washington, DC: US Department of
Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
National Center for Statistics and Analysis, Research, and
Development, 1998.
National Center for Health Statistics. Healthy people 2000
review, 1995 96. Hyattsville, Maryland: US Department of Health
and
Human Services, CDC, 1996.
Bureau of the Census, Economics and Statistics Administration,
US Department of Commerce. IDB data access display mode.
Available
at http://www.census.gov/ipc/ idbprint.html. Accessed December
8,
1998.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from ASCII text into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the electronic PDF version and/or the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables. An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800. Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.
