The deadline is approaching for submission of abstracts for the 18th International Conference on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety, T2007, to be held in Seattle, WA, USA, August 26th-30th, 2007. This will be ICADTS' first joint conference with The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists (TIAFT), and will provide a spotlight on the toxicology of alcohol, drugs and traffic safety, while retaining all the normal topic areas for ICADTS meetings. In addition, the Annual Ignition Interlock Symposium will also be part of T2007. Please visit the T2007 website, at: www.T2007.org to view the abstract submittal guidelines. Abstracts may be submitted online through the T2007 website, or by email.
The conference is structured with a strong scientific program, supported by a complete social program for relaxation and networking. It features receptions at the Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Flight, one of the world's top collections showing the history and development of human flight. The meeting will be capped off with the annual awards banquet. There will be a choice of several tours on Tuesday afternoon for delegates to various sites in the Pacific Northwest. Preliminary information on the tour options and the rest of the program is available on the web site.
The scientific organizing committee, co-chaired by Dr. Doug Beirness, Dr. Jorg Morland, Dr. Michael Walsh and Dr. Daniel Isenschmid, is soliciting papers in the subject areas of impaired driving, human performance toxicology, analytical methods, any aspect of alcohol, drugs and traffic safety including experimental studies of the effects of alcohol and/or drugs on driving, approaches to detecting drugged drivers, oral fluid technology, detection limits and device performance, demographics of drunk and drugged drivers, roadside surveys of alcohol and drug use, sobriety checkpoints, enforcement of DWI-DUID laws, alcohol ignition interlocks, rehabilitation, characteristics of offenders, prevention activities, epidemiological studies, and other related topics. Dr. Paul Marques will be coordinating the ignition interlock portion of the program.
The conference is being held in the Seattle Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center - a newly renovated world class meeting space - hotel reservations at the conference rate must be booked through the T2007 website, on the "hotel" tab at www.T2007.org. The website also contains conference registration information and expanded material on the social program and the various tours that are included in the registration fee that will be conducted on Tuesday afternoon.
ICADTS and TIAFT strongly support participation in T2007 by scientists from developing countries and full-time students studying or researching in the topic areas of the conference.
To determine qualifications for the greatly reduced registration fees, delegates from developing countries and students should check the conference website at: www.T2007.org. Click Registration and then page down to Special Registration Rates.
In addition, TIAFT and ICADTS, as sponsoring organizations, are offering financial support to deserving candidates through a scholarship program. They will offer five stipends for colleagues working in developing and transitional countries and five stipends for young scientists to attend the conference. The stipend ($2,000.00, and a waived registration fee) is intended to help researchers, students and workers in the field of traffic safety and forensic toxicology to attend T2007. Please see the details on the conference website on how to qualify and apply for one of these financial awards.
Applications should be submitted to the T2007 organizers before April 1, 2007. Applications, containing the information detailed on the website, www.T2007.org, should be sent by email to: mhuestis@intra.nida.nih.gov and degiercs@wxs.nl.
The report of the 1st International Traffic Expert Congress - Fit to Drive, held in Berlin, Germany in May 2006, has now been published in English. The theme was Individual Mobility, Traffic Offenders, Traffic Safety - A European Challenge. One of the objectives of the congress - organised by the Association of Technical Inspection Agencies (VdTÜV) - was to make an important contribution in halving road traffic fatalities within the EU to 25,000 in 2010, specified in the Road Safety Charter. The congress covered three safety issues: 1) Early pre-school safety education and training, 2) Driver training and 3) Risk and accident prevention, separated into three categories: a) Driving under the influence of alcohol and b) risk assessment from a medical and medical-psychological view as well as decision processes in assessment. Questions related to the mobility of specific subgroups of road users included: 1) Senior drivers, 2) Drivers committing traffic offences, and 3) Drivers committing DUI. In a more general sense, the following different traffic safety approaches in Europe were presented: 1) Comparing traffic safety in Europe, 2) Criteria for future models of driving fitness and 3) Quality assurance. Presentations made at the congress can be viewed at: www.fit-to-drive.com (click on FTD Congress 2006). To obtain a copy of the report, prepared by ICADTS President-elect Wolf-Rüdiger Nickel and Dr. Pierangelo Sardi, visit: www.kirschbaum.de, then click Aktuell, then click News.
The motto of the 2nd Fit to Drive Congress on the topic of fitness to drive and related road safety matters in Europe is: Reality and Vision - Common problems, European Solutions. As the second in a series of similar events, the Fit to Drive Congress will take place from June 14th - 15th, 2007 in Vienna, Austria. The congress is organised by the German Association of Technical Inspection Agencies (Verband der TÜV e.V.) in cooperation with the Austrian Road Safety Board (Kuratorium für Verkehrssicherheit / KfV) and several scientific and professional organisations.
Speakers from EU institutions and a range of European countries will address the following topics: primary prevention in pre-school, school and driver education and training; general prevention through legislation and enforcement, demerit point systems; secondary prevention with a special focus on the persistent drink-driver; risk assessment in medical and psychological matters; driver counselling, assessment, rehabilitation and therapy in different countries of the EU; interlock systems and rehabilitation and comparative studies of traffic safety in Europe. Information about the congress can be viewed at: www.fit-to-drive.com.
In a presentation at the 86th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in January, Richard Roth presented preliminary results of a study of interlocks for first DWI offenders in New Mexico.
In 2005, New Mexico became the first U.S. State to mandate the installation of interlocks on all DWI offenders. Interlocks would be required for 1 year for 1st offense, 2 years for 2nd offense, 3 years for 3rd offense and lifetime for 4 or more offenses. The 2003 Ignition Interlock License Act provided an alternative to revocation. The study attempted to demonstrate that: 1) Most offenders have no priors, 2) First offenders admit driving drunk many times before arrest, 3) Re-arrest rate of first offenders is similar to that of 2nd and 3rd offenders, 4) Interlocked first offenders have significantly less recidivism than those without interlocks, and 5) Interlocks are cost-effective for first offenders. Preliminary results showed that interlocked first offenders had a 62% less recidivism. After removal those who were interlocked still had a 19% lower recidivism rate, though the number of cases was not large enough to achieve statistical significance. For three years following interlock installation, those first offenders who installed mandated interlocks had lower recidivism rates. The study found the first offender interlock program to have a $4-$6 benefit for every $1 of cost and that 85% of offenders thought the program was fair.
More than twenty states are considering similar interlock bills this year, including the states of Illinois, Ohio, California, and Florida.
Analysis drawn from the 2004 Canadian Addiction Survey (CAS) highlighted the following in its report: 1) 4.8% of drivers responding to the Canadian Addiction Survey reported driving within two hours of using cannabis in the previous 12 months, a figure which has more than doubled since comparable studies done in 1988 and 1989, 2) males were 3.6 times more likely than females to drive under the influence of cannabis, 3) among those who reported driving under the influence of cannabis in the last year, the mean number of self-reported occurrences was 24.5, 4) people who reported driving under the influence of cannabis also reported consuming higher-than-average amounts of alcohol. This is a significant point, since combining cannabis with even small amounts of alcohol significantly increases the observed level of impairment.
The (CAS) was a collaborative initiative sponsored by Health Canada, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) and the Canadian Executive Council on Addictions (CECA).
The report was prepared by Douglas J. Beirness, Ph.D., and Christopher G. Davis, Ph.D. The full report may be accessed at: http://www.ccsa.ca/NR/rdonlyres/56FFA36B-58FC-402C-9DFF-2257514FDE7B/0/ccsa0114812006.pdf.
The ICADTS Executive Board has approved the establishment of two new working groups. The first, Unlicensed Drivers, was approved following a special technical session at the January Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, DC. The international session heard presentations from Jeff Suggett of Canada, David DeYoung and Bob Voas from the U.S. and Barry Watson from Australia. The goal of the working group will be to study and report on the scope of the unlicensed driving worldwide and its effects on road safety and recommend measures to reduce or prevent it. The working group will be co-chaired by Bob Voas (voas@pire.org) and Barry Sweedler (sweedlb@hotmail.com) Colleagues interested in joining the group should contact either of the co-chairs. The group will have its first meeting and a special session at T2007 in Seattle in August. Copies of the presentations can be obtained by contacting the Reporter editors.
The second working group, Alcohol Biomarkers, was formed to provide additional attention to the growing area of alcohol biomarkers. There is an expanding list of biomarkers for the detection of alcohol intake which can be found in a variety of biological matrices. For example, the use of hair expands the window for alcohol intake from days to weeks or months after consumption. The goal of the group is to evaluate and identify objective indicators to help define DWI offender risk, and establish valid application of such markers in the field of traffic safety. It will be chaired by Christine Moore (cmoore@immunalysis.com) and assisted by Paul Marques. Contact Dr. Moore if you would like to join the group. The group also plans to meet at T2007 in Seattle.
The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released state-by-state data for 2005 on alcohol-impaired driving. The report is drawn from NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System. In 2005, while the overall fatality rate increased marginally to 1.45 from 1.44 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles of travel (VMT) in 2004, the alcohol-related fatality rate declined to 0.56 from 0.57 fatalities per 100 million VMT.
The fatality rate in crashes involving at least one driver or motorcycle operator who had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or above - the illegal per se level in all States -- declined to 0.43 in 2005 from 0.44 fatalities per 100 million VMT in 2004. View the report at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/ncsa/RNotes/2006/810686.pdf.
A case-control study was conducted in Long Beach, CA and Fort Lauderdale, FL to examine the relative crash risk associated with drivers' blood alcohol concentrations (BACs). Data were obtained for drivers involved in 2,871 crashes of all severities. Two control drivers for each crash driver were sampled a week after the crash at the same location, on the same day of the week and at the same time of day.
For both groups of drivers, a research team recorded observations, administered a brief questionnaire and obtained breath specimens for BAC measurements. Of the 14,985 sampled drivers who were potentially available for testing, 91.7% of crash drivers and 97.9% of control drivers provided breath specimens. Relative risk models were generated with logistic regression techniques with and without covariates such as driver age, gender, marital status and ethnicity. The models without adjustment for the covariates show elevated relative risk beginning at 0.05 - 0.06% BACs with an accelerating increase in risk at BACs greater than 0.10%. With adjustment for covariates and bias due to missing data (nontested hit-and-run drivers, refusals, and incomplete responses), risk was elevated at a slightly lower BAC and the risk curve was steep. Statistically significant risk occurred at 0.04% BAC and small, non-significant elevations occurred at BACs closer to zero. Relative risk models were also produced for age groups and alcohol consumption levels.
The report is based on a study funded by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and was conducted by Richard D. Blomberg of Dunlap and Associates, Inc. Herbert Moskowitz, Marcelline Burns and Dary Fiorentino of the Southern California Research Institute and Raymond C. Peck of R.C. Peck and Associates served as subcontractors and were an integral part of the project team. The full report can be viewed at: http://dunlapandassociatesinc.com/crashriskofalcoholinvolveddriving.pdf.
MADD Canada has recently released two reports in its campaign to reduce impaired driving in Canada. The first, Rating The Provinces and Territories: The 2006 Report Card, is a comprehensive study to provide the provinces and territories with information on realistic and effective measures that will reduce impaired driving in their jurisdiction. The five core elements of the 2006 rating scale are: 1) a comprehensive graduated licensing program for all new drivers; 2) a .00% BAC limit for all drivers under 21 or with less than five years driving experience; 3) express police powers to stop vehicles, establish sobriety checkpoints; 4) a strengthening of the existing short-term roadside licence suspension programs; and 5) mandatory alcohol interlock, vehicle impoundment and forfeiture, and remedial programs.
Almost all of the provinces and territories have introduced some measures to strengthen their impaired driving legislation since The 2003 Report Card. However, while some jurisdictions have made major strides, others have done relatively little. Manitoba (A-) has again led the way in introducing important legislative reforms, and Newfoundland and Labrador (B-), the Northwest Territories (B-) and Alberta (B-) have also made significant progress. In contrast, Nova Scotia (C to D+) and Québec (C+ to C) have fallen sharply in the rankings, and New Brunswick (D), Nunavut (F) and Prince Edward Island (D+) have made little progress from their poor showing in 2003. Ontario maintained its B rating from 2003, British Columbia improved from D+ to C+ and Saskatchewan improved from C to B-.
The second report, Youth and Impaired Driving in Canada: Opportunities for Progress provides a broad survey of legislative measures that the provincial and territorial governments can implement to better protect young Canadians. Despite the progress that was made between 1980 and the mid-90s, traffic crashes remain the largest cause of death among 15-24 year old Canadians, accounting for 31% of their deaths in 2003. MADD's priorities reflect the need to address both the hazardous patterns of alcohol and drug consumption among Canadian youth, and their lack of driving skills and experience. These priorities are: 1) More rigorous enforcement of the existing liquor licence prohibitions against selling, serving or giving alcohol to minors or intoxicated individuals; 2) Implementation of a comprehensive Graduated Licensing Program (GLP) comprised of three licensing stages; 3) Enactment of a zero BAC limit for all drivers under the age of 21; 4) Enactment of express statutory authority permitting the police to stop vehicles and inspect documentation, to demand breath samples from drivers and supervisors who are subject to a GLP; and 5) Introduction of systematic sobriety checkpoint programs in areas that traditionally have high concentrations of young impaired drivers and pedestrians.
The two reports were prepared by Prof. Robert Solomon, Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario. His coauthor for the first report was Dr. S.G.A. Pital. Prof. Erika Chamberlain coauthored the second report. View both reports at: www.MADD.ca.
A study that appeared in Traffic Injury Prevention, (Vol. 7, Issue 4, December 2006) was performed to clarify the relation between alcohol use and traffic fatalities in accidents involving motor vehicles in Japan. Data on traffic accidents were collected from Fukuoka Prefectural Police records of traffic accidents which occurred in that prefecture between 1987 and 1996.
The data showed that 58,421 male drivers were involved in traffic accidents during the 10-year study period, and that 271 of these were killed as a result of the accident. Alcohol use was significantly associated with speed, seat belt use, time, and road form. Among male motorcar drivers, about 75% of fatalities might have been prevented if drivers had not drunk before driving. The study concluded that alcohol use before driving resulted in a 4.08-fold increase in the risk of death in a traffic accident. The study was conducted by Yuki Fujita and Akira Shibata of the Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Kurume University.
As discussed in detail in the Vol. 17, No. 4 of the Reporter, in early September, The ICADTS Working Group on Illegal Drugs and Driving and others hosted a 4-day meeting of experts in Drugged Driving research in Talloires, France. The goal of the meeting was to develop a set of standards for Drugged Driving research designed to insure the comparability of data from country to country. The product from the Talloires meeting is a draft standards document integrating the discussions and recommendations posed throughout the proceedings. Utilizing the Delphi Method, the draft document will be posted on the ICADTS and TIAFT websites, from March 1st thru April 15th, where comments will be solicited from the greater drug-impaired driving research community. All comments will be considered by the organizers.
It is anticipated that the final version of the Standards Document will be available for distribution at T2007, the joint ICADTS/TIAFT conference in August 2007 in Seattle, WA.
The ICADTS Reporter quarterly newsletter is available by email and online. Anyone preferring to receive their copy via email instead of by post, please advise the editors. In addition, the current and past editions of the Reporter can be viewed and downloaded from the ICADTS website: www.ICADTS.org. Past editions, from 1996, are posted on the website and can be searched using a very user-friendly, fully indexed word, search engine.
April 15-20, 2007
The Effects of Drugs on Human Performance and Behavior - Bloomington, IN, U.S.A.
Contact: Center for Studies of Law in Action, Indiana Univ. Email: dlindsay@indiana.edu, or www.indiana.edu/~lawactn.
June 14-15, 2007
2nd Fit to Drive Congress: Reality and Vision - Common problems, European Solutions - Vienna, Austria
Visit: www.fit-to-drive.com. for program and registration info.
August 26-31, 2007
T'2007-18th International Conference on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety - Seattle, Washington, United States
Sponsored by ICADTS, The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists and the Ignition Interlock Symposium.
Visit www.ICADTS2007.org for information.
September 3-5, 2007
Changing Lanes-Road Safety Summit-Halmstad, Sweden
For information about the Tylösand Conference, contact www.tylosandconference.com