Relation between alcohol consumption and traffic violations and accidents in the region of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo State

Road traffic injuries and substance use in Latin America: A systematic review

OBJECTIVE

The aim of the study is to identify and report the epidemiological patterns of substance use on fatal and non-fatal road traffic injuries (RTIs) in Latin America.

METHODS

A systematic review identified all published studies from January 2010 through October 2020. Twenty-eight studies were included from PubMed and SciELO databases. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used to assess the methodological quality of the studies.

RESULTS

The prevalence of alcohol consumption in fatal RTIs in studies where 100% of the target population were tested varies from 15.3% up to 55% in Brazil; with respect to non-fatal RTIs, it varies from 9.1% in car drivers in Brazil to 24.1% in emergency patients in Argentina. The most studied drug other than alcohol was cannabis, present in 6.5% up to 20.8% of non-fatal RTIs cases, but lower rates of testing for drugs was reported. Few studies reported epidemiological association measures.

CONCLUSIONS

This article shows that scientific production on substance use and RTIs in the region is limited and reports the prevalence of substance use, with few estimates of the relative risk of drug use and RTIs.

Alcohol consumption among drivers in Curitiba, Brazil

INTRODUCTION

The combination of drinking and driving is globally understood as a risk factor for road traffic crashes and disastrous outcomes such as injury and disability or death. However, the magnitude of the problem may not always be known in many countries, particularly where there are legislative loopholes. In Brazil, until December 2012, verification by breathalyzer of drinking and driving was dependent on drivers' acceptance of the tests after being stopped by the police.

OBJECTIVE

To describe the epidemiological profile of drinking and driving behaviors of a sample of drivers from Curitiba, Brazil, and explore the sociodemographic characteristics of those interviewed at police sobriety checkpoints.

METHODS

Drivers were selected and interviewed at police checkpoints on public roads in Curitiba. The local police, after informed consent, applied breathalyzer tests to check the drivers' blood alcohol content and the results were compared with data previously collected through interviews containing self-reports of drinking and driving. Data were collected between March and November 2012.

RESULTS

Of the 511 drivers asked to participate in the study, 398 (77.9%) agreed to give a roadside interview. Most respondents were single men between the ages of 18 and 29 years, with 8.3% of interviewed drivers self-reporting alcohol consumption in the last 6 h before driving. On the other hand, only 46.2% of the whole sample accepted the breathalyzer testing. Among those breathalyzed by the police, 2.7% tested positive for alcohol.

DISCUSSION

This study, conducted on public roads in Curitiba, shows a noticeable proportion of drivers voluntarily self-reporting drinking and driving. However, a smaller percentage was confirmed to have positive blood alcohol content, likely due to the high breathalyzer refusal rate.

Characteristics of 1226 alcohol-positive drivers involved in nonfatal traffic crashes in Shanghai, China

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of our study was to better characterize and evaluate drunk driving for governmental reference in order to further reduce alcohol-impaired driving.

METHOD

This article reports the characteristics of 1226 alcohol-positive drivers with blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) at or over the legal limit of 0.20 mg/mL involved in nonfatal traffic accidents in Shanghai, China, from 2008 to 2011. The mean BAC, age, and gender of these drivers are discussed as well as the vehicle types and times of day when the crashes occurred.

RESULTS

The mean BAC was 1.41 mg/mL and the mean age was 38 years old, and the vast majority of drivers were male (96.9%). The mean BAC of male drivers (1.42 mg/mL) was higher than that of female drivers (1.20 mg/mL). The mean age of male drivers (38) was also higher than that of female drivers (33). Distributions of vehicle types involved were studied. Cars had the highest percentage of occurrences (56.4%), followed by motorcycles (32.8%), electric bicycles (6.8%), trucks (1.5%), and bicycles (0.8%). It was found that these alcohol-related traffic crashes most often occurred between 7:00 p.m. and 10:59 p.m., representing 48.1 percent (n = 590) of the 1226 cases. Single-vehicle crashes were overrepresented (70.3%) in all cases. The mean BAC in multivehicle crashes (1.69 mg/mL) was higher than that in single-vehicle crashes (1.30 mg/mL).

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicated a notable need for more governmental attention that would prevent accidents caused by driving under the influence of alcohol.

Prediction of road traffic death rate using neural networks optimised by genetic algorithm

Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are realised as a main cause of public health problems at global, regional and national levels. Therefore, prediction of road traffic death rate will be helpful in its management. Based on this fact, we used an artificial neural network model optimised through Genetic algorithm to predict mortality. In this study, a five-fold cross-validation procedure on a data set containing total of 178 countries was used to verify the performance of models. The best-fit model was selected according to the root mean square errors (RMSE). Genetic algorithm, as a powerful model which has not been introduced in prediction of mortality to this extent in previous studies, showed high performance. The lowest RMSE obtained was 0.0808. Such satisfactory results could be attributed to the use of Genetic algorithm as a powerful optimiser which selects the best input feature set to be fed into the neural networks. Seven factors have been known as the most effective factors on the road traffic mortality rate by high accuracy. The gained results displayed that our model is very promising and may play a useful role in developing a better method for assessing the influence of road traffic mortality risk factors.