The term Designated Driver (DD) refers to the practice of assigning one member of a group to be the driver and to abstain from alcohol. A recent US national roadside survey indicated that DDs had higher BACs than drivers who did not make that claim. The objective of this study was to investigate the conflict between the formal definition and the actual implementation of the DD concept. A telephone survey was conducted of 937 randomly selected California adults in 1996. Questions covered awareness and understanding of the DD concept, drinking quantity and frequency, and location of drinking and driving/riding following drinking. Although the results indicated that recognition of the concept was almost universal (92% recognition), when asked to provide a definition of a DD, a significant proportion of the respondents provided definitions inconsistent with safety. For instance, about 11% of the sample reported that a DD could have two or more alcoholic beverages before driving. The results indicate that further educational efforts are needed to assure the effective implementation of DD strategies by the general public. (Author/publisher).
Abstract