Laws prohibiting the service of alcohol to already intoxicated patrons of bars and restaurants are seldom enforced. Following introduction of an enforcement effort in Washtenaw County, Michigan, observed refusals of service to "pseudopatrons" simulating intoxication rose from 17.5% to 54.3%, declining eventually to 41.0%. At the same time, the percentage of those arrested drunk drivers coming from bars and restaurants declined from 31.7% to 23.3%. In a comparison county, refusals of service rose to a significantly smaller extent, from 11.5% to 32.7%, while the percentage of DWIs coming from bars and restaurants showed no significant changes. Service refusals were related to volume of business and numbers of intoxicated patrons in an establishment at the time of observation, while numbers of arrested DWIs was related to the nature of the establishment's clientele, policies, and practices. While enforcement of alcohol service laws offers a potentially cost beneficial means of reducing highway crashes, replication across additional jurisdictions is needed.

We conducted a survey of a probability sample of adult residents in the State of Michigan, assessed public support for various alcohol and drinking-driving policy changes, examined how opinions on various policies clustered, and compared Michigan results with national surveys on these issues. Results showed high levels of public support for raising alcohol excise taxes (82%), prohibiting concurrent sales of alcohol and gasoline (74%), administratively suspending drivers licenses of those over the legal alcohol limit (67%), limiting the numbers of alcohol outlets via government regulation (63%), and lowering the legal alcohol limit for drivers to .05 g/dl (55%). Support for these policies was found across all income and education categories, but was significantly lower among frequent heavy drinkers. Policies with lower levels of public support include liability of commercial servers and social hosts, and stricter limits on hours of alcohol sales. Results are clearly relevant to current policy debates, and point to the need for further research on how opinions concerning alcohol policies are interrelated.

This study examined parameters under which risk compensation in driving can occur following the use of safety belts. Risk compensation theories hypothesize that if individuals use safety belts, they will drive in a more risky manner than if they do not use safety belts due to an increased perception of safety. Although the existence of risk compensation in driving has been debated in the literature for many years, the current study was the first experimental analysis of this theory that permitted a controlled examination of both between-subject and within-subject effects. This study required subjects to drive a 5-hp. go-kart around an oval track either buckled or unbuckled in the first of two phases of 15 driving trials. After the first phase the safety condition was switched for half the subjects (i.e., the safety belt was removed from subjects using it or was used by subjects who previously did not use it). Dependent measures included latency for each lap, deviations from the prescribed lane, and perceived safety while driving. The amount of time it took for subjects to travel to the go-kart track and their safety belt use during that trip was also measured. Risk compensation theory was not supported in the between-subject analyses of the research data; however, some within-subject comparisons did demonstrate risk compensation. Subjects who switched from not using the safety belt to using it increased driving speed during the second phase significantly more than subjects who used the safety belt during both driving phases. The study suggested that the occurrence of risk compensation is dependent upon individuals being able to compare the sensations using a safety belt with those of not using a safety belt. Risk compensation did not manifest itself in between-subject studies because this comparison could not take place. The implications of this study to driving automobiles on multi-user roadways is discussed. Suggestions for research to further expand the knowledge about how and when risk compensation occurs are also provided.