Drink-driving research in New Zealand is briefly analyzed with reference to traffic accidents. Claims about drinking, driving, and accidents which have currency in New Zealand at present are appraised. It is shown that many factors are involved in traffic accidents, and the problems in their causation are highly complex. Alcohol is only one of many factors present in accidents. It is involved in less than half of all injury-producing accidents. Much of its involvement in traffic accidents is of a spurious rather than a causal nature. Yet the focus of countermeasures against traffic accidents is drinking and driving. These countermeasures are ineffective.
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