The effect of higher rural interstate speed limits in alcohol-related accidents.

This research analyzes the effect which recent speed limit increases on rural interstate highways have had upon accidents that are alcohol-related. Although there has been considerable work on the separate highway safety effects of higher speed limits and alcohol-related accidents, surprisingly little work has explicitly examined the relationship between them. Based upon extensive county wide data on alcohol-related accidents and several theoretically important determinants of these accidents for the state of Indiana and over the period 1981 through 1989, fixed effects models were estimated. For the state as a whole, the analysis finds that the increase in rural interstate speed limits increased alcohol-related accidents and the magnitude of the effect was statistically significant. In addition, the relaxed speed limit led to a significant redistribution of alcohol-related accidents away from higher speed environments and towards lower speed environments. With few exceptions, this was true for every type of alcohol-related highway accident examined.

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