Understanding the Decline in Drinking and Driving During “The Other Great Moderation”

Abstract

This article seeks to explain the large decline in drinking and driving that occurred in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Using a simple measure of drinking and driving—the fraction of crashes involving drinking drivers—we develop a basic traffic safety model that improves estimates of drunk driving laws' effects and breaks down declines in drinking and driving into components associated with each major influence that has been identified in the literature—including unobservable “social forces.” In this decomposition, we find that the widespread enactment of seven major drunk driving laws explains only one-fifth of the reduction in drinking and driving over this period, comparable to the effects of reduced alcohol consumption and less than those of demographic shifts and changes in social attitudes. “The Other Great Moderation” is best understood as a two-decade movement of drinking and driving to a new steady state, led by social forces and cemented and extended by law.