Road safety impact of extended drinking hours in Ontario

Abstract

Purpose-On 1 May 1996, Ontario, Canada amended the Liquor Licence Act to extend the hours of alcohol sales and service in licensed establishments from 1 to 2 a.m. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the road safety impact of extended drinking hours in Ontario.Method-A quasi-experimental design using interrupted time series with a nonequivalent nointervention control group was used to assess changes. The analyzed data sets are total and alcoholrelated, monthly, traffic fatalities for Ontario, for the 11-12 p.m., 12-1 a.m., 1-2 a.m. and 2-3 a.m. time windows, for Sunday through Wednesday nights and for Thursday through Saturday nights, for 4 years pre-and 3 years post-policy change, compared to neighbouring regions of New York and Michigan.Results-The blood alcohol concentration positive driver fatality trends reflected downward trends for Sunday-Wednesday 12-2 a.m. and Thursday-Saturday 1-2 a.m. for Ontario and downward trends for Thursday-Saturday 12-1 a.m. and 2-3 a.m. for New York and Michigan after the extended drinking hour policy change. Ontario total fatality data showed similar trends to the Ontario blood alcohol positive trends.Conclusions-The multiple datasets converge in suggesting little impact on BAC positive fatalities with extension of the closing hours. These observations are consistent with other studies of small changes in alcohol availability. KeywordsDrinking hours; Alcohol control policy; Collisions; Fatalities *Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 519 858 5063x2; fax: +1 519 858 5063. E-mail address: evingili@uwo.ca (E. Vingilis). 2 Sunday through Wednesday and Thursday through Saturday nights refer to the hours 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., and thus Sunday night after midnight actually would be Monday morning 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. For consistency, the Sunday-Wednesday and Thursday-Saturday is used to connote the hour before midnight and the hours after midnight of the next day.NIH Public Access

The impact of Ontario's extended drinking hours on cross-border cities of Windsor and Detroit

“…As reviewed in Vingilis et al (2005), most studies on the effects of extended hours of sale have been conducted primarily in Australia and the United Kingdom who have found mixed results. The only recent Ontario evaluation of hours of sale was conducted by Vingilis et al (2005) who examined the impact of extended drinking hours for the province of Ontario using an interrupted time series, quasi-experimental design with non-equivalent no-intervention control groups.…”

“…The only recent Ontario evaluation of hours of sale was conducted by Vingilis et al (2005) who examined the impact of extended drinking hours for the province of Ontario using an interrupted time series, quasi-experimental design with non-equivalent no-intervention control groups. The analyzed data sets were total and alcohol-related, monthly traffic fatalities for Ontario compared to neighbouring regions of New York and Michigan, for the 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. time windows, for 4 years pre-and 3 years post-policy change.…”

“…Monthly data for 4 years pre-intervention and 3 years post-intervention were chosen to ensure adequate power; a sample of 84 monthly data points with the intervention month at 48 months has a 86.7% chance of detecting a step intervention whose magnitude is one standard deviation with an α of .05 . As in the detailed statistical description provided in Vingilis et al (2005), following exploratory analyses, the simple step intervention model (Aox and Tiao, 1976) was fitted to test statistically for the presence of shifts in the level of the time series. After the model is fit, plots of the residual autocorrelation function are examined to check for possible autocorrelation.…”

Impact of Extended Drinking Hours in Ontario on Motor-Vehicle Collision and Non-Motor-Vehicle Collision Injuries

“…Various jurisdictions have recently reviewed extended drinking hours policies (e.g., Drummond, 2000;Institute of Alcohol Studies, 2003;Jang, 2002;Strategic Task Force on Alcohol, 2002). As reviewed in Vingilis et al (2005), most studies on the effects of extended hours of service have been conducted primarily in Australia and the United Kingdom and have found mixed results. Few studies have examined the effects on injuries presenting to trauma units.…”

Conceptual and Methodological Issues in Evaluations of Road Safety Countermeasures

“…A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded evaluation of the road safety impact of extended drinking hours of alcohol sales and service in licensed establishments in Ontario, Canada was conducted [74,75]. The study used a quasi-experimental design with interrupted time series analyses of BAC-positive fatalities for the different time windows and days (11 p.m.-4 a.m., Sunday-Wednesday and Thursday-Saturday) over which the extended drinking would have occurred for the intervention (Ontario), compared to control jurisdictions (Michigan and New York).…”