In 2001, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began using a revised method, namely multiple imputation, to estimate missing information about blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels for persons involved in fatal crashes. The alcohol estimates in this traffic safety fact sheet are based on the new imputation method. Because many states have adopted 0.08 g/dl as the legal threshold for alcohol intoxication, NHTSA now estimates alcohol involvement in the following three categories: 0.00 g/dl, no alcohol; 0.01 to 0.07 g/dl, impaired; and 0.08+, intoxicated. It appeared that traffic fatalities in alcohol-related crashes rose slightly (by 0.1%) from 17,400 in 2001 to 17,419 in 2002. The 17,419 alcohol-related fatalities in 2002 (41% of total traffic fatalities for the year) represent a 5% reduction from the 18,290 alcohol-related fatalities reported in 1992 (47% of the total). NHTSA estimates that alcohol was involved in 41% of fatal crashes and in 6% of all crashes in 2002.
Abstract