Alcohol and traffic accidents in Poland in the years 1975-1984

Abstract

The basic aim of the study was to investigate the influence of alcohol consumption on the road traffic safety in Poland. For this purpose, statistical data were used, published. by the Road Traffic Department of the Civic Militia Headquarters in the years 1975-1984, as well as the data published in Statistical Yearbooks of the Central Statistical Office for these years. It was impossible to include earlier periods in the analysis as in 1975 the rules of statistical registration of traffic accidents were changed, making the data from before 1975 uncomparable. When analysing the problem of the influence the extent of alcohol consumption has on road traffic safety, attention should be drawn to two problems. Firstly, accidents are caused not only by drunk drivers of vehicles but also by drunk pedestrians. Secondly, the drunkenness of the participants of traffic is not an isolated factor but it acts in correlation with other factors, such as e.g. faulty configuration of the road or wrong organization of road traffic. The taking into account of the above problems complicates the analysis of the discussed subject; however, they should not be left out of consideration. A collision of a car with a pedestrian has for many years now been the most frequent type of a traffic accident in Poland, amounting to 43-45 per cent of all traffic accidents. Moreover, traffic accidents caused by drunk pedestrians constitute 43-50 per cent of all accidents caused by drunk persons. Therefore, the contribution of drunk persons to traffic accidents in Poland is considerable; yet it is very difficult to find out how many drunk pedestrains participate in traffic and, in this connection, what is the relation between the number of such persons and that of accidents they cause. For that matter, such difficulties arise also , when one tries to find out the number of drunk drivers of vehicles as in Poland there are no data available which would make such an estimation possible. In spite of these difficulties, the basic hypothesis has been confirmed, according to which the greater the extent of alcohol consumption, the. Higher the frequency of traffic accidents caused by drunk persons. As shown by a statistical analysis by means of the correlation coefficient, there is a strong direct correlation between the two phenomena (r =0.680). This correlation was true for the years 1975-1980 only, while for the years 1981-1984 the smaller was the extent of alcohol consumption, the greater was the frequency of traffic accidents caused by drunk persons. It should be assumed that this absurd result was caused by the lowering of the official figures on the extent of alcohol consumption in Poland in the years 198l-1984 which did not take into account the consumption of illegally distilled alcohol. An estimation was made of the above figures and thus the approximate actual extent of alcohol consumption in Poland in the years 1981-1984 was established. Also the results of traffic accidents caused by drunk persons were studied. Judged by the number of deaths per accident, they .appeared to be much more serious than those caused by sober participants of traffic. The difference between the results of accidents caused by drunk as compared with sober persons was also found to vary according to whether the drunk perpetrator was a pedestrian or a driver, and what vehicle he was driving in the latter case. For instance, while 0.114 persons per accident died in traffic accidents caused in 1979-1984 b sober pedestrians, the ratio was 0.156 in the case of drunk pedestrians; the respective ratios were 0.116 and 0.191 in the case of sober vs. drunk drivers of passenger cars, and 0.132 and 0.320 in the case of sober vs. drunk drivers of tractors. The distribution of traffic accidents caused by drunk persons according to the time of the day, day of the week and month of the year was also analysed. The yearly distribution of accidents caused by drunk pedestrians appeared to shape differently as compared with accidents caused by drunk drivers. Drunk drivers of vehicles cause the greatest number of accidents in the period from July till October. and drunk pedestrians - from October till January. Also the analysis of the territorial distribution of traffic accidents caused by drunk persons brought interesting results, Drunk pedestrians cause traffic accidents first and foremost in towns (about two thirds of such accidents), in big cities in particular, whereas drunk drivers cause accidents mainly on roads out of towns (about 60 per cent of such accidents). The lack of data concerning the extent of alcohol consumption in the separate voivodships greatly complicated the analysis of the territorial distribution of traffic accidents caused by drunk persons. However, it was possible to arrive at the following conclusion: the number of accidents caused by drunk participants of road traffic per 10.000 of the population of a given voivodship (the index of occurrence of such accidents) depends not only on the extent of alcohol consumption in the voivodship but also to some degree on its urbanization and development of road transport. Particularly in voivodships where a high level of urbanization (measured by the size of the urban population) and a highly developed road transport (measured by the number of persons per one passenger car) is not accompanied by an adequate quality of roads and good organization of road traffic; the large number of accidents caused by drunk persons cannot be explained by a high level of alcohol consumption. Bad road conditions exert the greatest influence on those of the participants of traffic who find it difficult to adapt their behavior1r to the complex situation on the road, i.e. on drunk persons, among others, whose intellectual and psychomotoric efficiency is handicapped due to the effects of alcohol. Bad road conditions may ,,produce" errors committed by drunk participants of traffic, and lead to traffic accidents caused by these persons, thus making the number of such accidents larger than that expected when considering the .number of drunk' participants of road traffic. However. there are voivodships where the factors leading to traffic accidents caused by drunk persons do not seem to be major and yet the number of such accidents is considerable. These are probably the voivodships where the extent of alcohol consumption is particularly high. It should be added that the taking up of the subject included in the title was justified by the seriousness of the problem. In the years 1975-1984, the number of traffic accidents caused by drunk persons was on a constant increase in Poland. While accidents caused by drunk persons constituted 21.5 per cent of all accidents in 1975, their respective share was 26.5 per cent in 1984. Therefore, it is imperative to apply measures that could stop a further growth of this dangerous tendency.