Over the last four decades, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and/or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have conducted four national surveys to estimate the prevalence of drinking and driving in the U.S. (Wolfe, 1974; Lund and Wolfe, 1991; Voas, et al, 1998). These surveys utilized a stratified random sample of weekend nighttime drivers in the contiguous 48 States. The first National Roadside Survey (NRS) was conducted in 1973, followed by national surveys of alcohol use by drivers in 1986, 1996, and 2007. The 2007 NRS included, for the first time, measures to estimate the use of other potentially impairing drugs by drivers. Prior roadside surveys had collected breath samples to determine blood alcohol concentration (BAC). Due to developments in analytic toxicology, NHTSA determined it would be feasible in the 2007 survey to collect oral fluid and/or blood samples to determine driver use of a wide variety of other potentially impairing drugs. A pilot test conducted in 2005 demonstrated the feasibility of conducting this more complex survey procedure and confirmed that motorists would voluntarily participate in the study (Lacey, et al, 2007). The 2007 NRS was designed to produce national estimates of alcohol and drug use by drivers. Thus, the use rates shown below are national prevalence rates calculated from the percentage of subjects using alcohol or drugs and adjusted with an appropriate weighting scheme. (Author/publisher)
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