Epidemiologic surveillance of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 1975-1983

Data were obtained through a nine-year retrospective surveillance of 1719 traffic deaths from 1975 through 1983 among Allegheny County, Pennsylvania residents. Death certificates and coroner's records were reviewed to validate cause-of-death certification. Independent mapping schemes were developed to link the confirmed traffic deaths to the Pennsylvania Accident Record System (ARS) computerized data files for the Pittsburgh Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA). The resultant hits were validated using information from police reports and coroner's records. The matching procedures resulted in successfully linking to the ARS tapes 97 percent of the validated traffic deaths with an accident within the Pittsburgh SMSA.;Alcohol and other drug involvement were assigned to each fatality after the review of coroner's toxicology findings and linkage to the ARS tapes for alcohol information. Fifty percent of the fatalities resulted from a vehicular crash involving alcohol; drugs other than alcohol were found in only seven percent of the cases. Of the 116 fatalities with drug-involved traffic crashes, only 42 did not involve alcohol.;Overall, age-adjusted traffic fatality rates remained stable at 13 per 100,000 from 1975 to 1980, began to decline in 1981, and reached a low of 8.76 per 100,000 in 1982. Age-adjusted alcohol-specific rates showed a similar trend. In addition, age-adjusted rates of non-alcohol-involved deaths declined in a linear fashion from 1975 to 1983. The decline in traffic fatality rates that began in 1981 was associated with a large decrease in alcohol involvement, not confounded by increases in drug-related traffic deaths. The decline in overall traffic mortality rates could not be explained totally by the associated decline in alcohol-specific rates i.e., the decline in traffic fatalities not involving alcohol explained a small portion of the overall decline experienced in 1981 and 1982.;The results of this study demonstrated an improved method for the surveillance of alcohol- and other drug-related motor vehicle traffic deaths. It validated cause-of-death certification and provided a linkage of confirmed traffic deaths to the police accident file, maximizing all available data.