DOI: 10.21949/1529973
title: National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors: 2008 [Supporting Datasets]

description: National Transportation Library (NTL) Curation Note: This dataset was submitted from an USDOT modal research office, in accordance with U.S. DOT’s Public Access Plan (https://doi.org/10.21949/1503647) Section 7.4.2 Data. While this dataset was created prior to the implementation of the DOT Public Access Plan in 2016, the publishing office is committed to sharing its research data with the public. NTL staff has performed Level C Curation, or Enhanced Curation, on this dataset. This means that NTL staff has: converted data into to new preservation-friendly, open file formats; enhanced documentation and metadata to make the dataset more FAIR; and, checked for the presence of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or other sensitive data, in order to protect privacy. NTL staff has NOT made any changes to individual data values. NTL staff last accessed this dataset on 2024-01-21. Please email NTLDataCurator@dot.gov if you have questions or issues opening files. NTL staff will provide what assistance they can.
description: This dataset supports the conclusions of the report "National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors: 2008." This report presents results from the eighth in a series of national telephone surveys conducted for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to assess current status and trends regarding the public’s attitudes, knowledge, and self-reported behavior related to drinking and driving. This Volume (II): Findings Report presents a detailed description of respondents’ behaviors and attitudes including reported frequency of drinking and driving, the characteristics of their most recent drinking-driving occasion, their perceptions of drinking and driving as a problem, actions they have taken to avoid drinking and driving or prevent others from driving impaired, their attitudes and experience with enforcement of the drinking and driving laws, and the perceived effectiveness of different intervention strategies. Volume I: Summary Report presents a summary of these topics. Volume III: Methods Report describes the survey methodology and contains copies of the 2008 survey questionnaires. Twenty percent of the public age 16 and older had in the past year driven a motor vehicle within 2 hours of drinking alcohol, a number largely unchanged from previous survey years. About two-thirds of these drinking-drivers did so in the past 30 days. Computed national estimates showed the public making 85.5 million drinking-driving trips in the past 30 days, up from 73.7 million trips in 2004 and reversing a declining trend in such trips since 1995. Males were overrepresented, accounting for 48% of the population 16 and older but 78% of past-month drinking-driving trips. While few persons 16 to 20 reported drinking and driving, those that did tended to acknowledge they were heavy drinkers, an average of 5.7 drinks per normal sitting. However, binge drinking was most common among 21-to-24-year-olds, and males in this age group were most likely to report riding in the past year with a driver who might have had too much alcohol to drive safely (24%). A subset of the total sample was categorized as problem drinkers based on the data. More than one-half (56%) of drinking-drivers that were identified as problem drinkers said they had driven at least once in the past year when they thought they were over the legal limit, compared to 24% of other drinking-drivers. More than four-fifths (81%) of the public 16 and older viewed drinking and driving by others as a major safety threat to themselves and their families. One-third (33%) of all respondents had ridden with a designated driver in the past year, and 44% of drivers had been a designated driver in the past year. One-third of the public believed drivers who have had too much to drink to drive safely will be very likely (21%) or almost certain (12%) to get stopped by the police. Thirty percent had seen a sobriety checkpoint in the past year.

The data supports the outputs: National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors: 2008: Volume 1: Summary Report https://doi.org/10.21949/1525697; National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors: 2008: Volume 2: Findings Report https://doi.org/10.21949/1525698; National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors: 2008: Volume 3: Methodology Report https://doi.org/10.21949/1525699; National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors [2008] [Traffic Tech] https://doi.org/10.21949/15258846.

NTL staff has reviewed the data and feels that re-identification risk of study participants from this dataset is low.

The .ZIP folder (25MB in size) of datasets and supporting documentation contains files in the following formats: .CSV files which can be opened with any text editor; .TXT files which can be opened with any text editor; .PDF files that can be opened with any PDF reader; .DOCX files that can be opened in Microsoft Word and some web-based programs; .SAV and .EGP files which can be opened with IBM SPSS statistical software; .SAS, .SAS7bdat and .SPS files which can be opened in SAS statistical software; and, .JSON files which can be opened with text editors or metadata editing programs.