This paper is concerned not with the numbers of alcohol-related highway injuries, but rather with the extent to which a social consensus developed in the 1980s concerning their problematic nature, their cause, and appropriate countermeasures. The paper does not inquire into the validity of the consensual definition, but instead is concerned with development and changes in the frame within which traffic safety is viewed by social actors including technical experts, political leaders, victims organizations, media, the judiciary, and other interested parties. This paper treats the events of the early 1980s as a development not in fundamental facts and statistics but in their social interpretation. It tries to explain thinking about accidents in terms of changes in their conception, and in the problem's ownership, over the course of recent history. Drunk driving was a new idea, and it commanded considerable public attention and intrigued the US political process for more than a decade, though subtle changes were occurring in the consensual understanding over time. The current decade has seen a major change in the understanding and politics of drunk driving, to the point one can say that the problem may be coming to an end. (A)
Samenvatting