November 7, 2005 Source: University of Western Ontario:
http://communications.uwo.ca/media_newsroom/story.html?listing_id=20098&PHPSESSID=9b9dd0f94d743d9a27dd99ee563aa57d Study Reports on Impact of Extended Drinking Hours London, ON - Extending drinking hours to 2 a.m. in Ontario has lead to a
significant increase in drinking related motor vehicle casualties in the
cross-border city of Windsor, Ontario. The findings of a four year study led by Dr. Evelyn Vingilis, director
of the Population and Community Health Unit and professor of family
medicine at The University of Western Ontario's Schulich School of
Medicine & Dentistry, were recently published in two articles in
Accident Analysis and Prevention. Vingilis and her team examined Ontario's alcohol-related traffic
fatalities in comparison with Michigan and New York states, and the
Windsor-Detroit border. There is a history of cross-border drinking
problems at this crossing, which is the busiest Canada-US traffic border
with more than 16 million vehicles crossing every year. They found a
significant increase in alcohol-related vehicle injuries and deaths in
Windsor after drinking hours were extended and a significant decrease in
Detroit. "The extended drinking hour was of interest to us because international
research has shown that as availability of alcohol increases, so does
alcohol-related problems, such as alcohol-related collisions," says
Vingilis. "In Canda we have about 3,000 deaths due to motor vehicle
collisions, of which about 35-40 per cent are alcohol-related and more
than 200,000 people are injured. The economic cost of traffic
collisions is $25 billion annually: property losses, health care costs,
lost productivity and absenteeism." The research team found that overall, alcohol-related driver deaths in
Ontario did not increase after drinking hours were extended. The results
of a survey of licensed establishments also showed that many did not
extend their drinking hours, particularly from Sunday to Wednesday. "These results suggest alcohol availability might not have substantively
increased in the province of Ontario, despite the regulation change,"
says Vingilis "In the Windsor-Detroit area, where there is a high
density of licensed establishments, the extended drinking hour might
mean that more Canadians are not crossing the border to drink, which
could explain the increase in alcohol-related motor vehicle casualties
in Windsor and the decrease in Detroit." The study also suggests that the effects of extended drinking hours for
the province of Ontario as a whole may be minimal or masked by other
factors such as: " Drinking-driving death rates have been changing in response to several
factors including a number of road safety initiatives;
" Many licensed establishments did not seem to change their hours of
closing, so alcohol availability may not have increased dramatically;
" The extra hour may be providing drinkers with the opportunity to go to
licensed establishments an hour later;
" Those who typically drink at home or at parties would not be affected
by the longer hours. The Government of Ontario amended the Liquor License Act to extend the
hours of alcohol sales and service from 1 to 2 a.m. in May of 1996. Co-authors on the study are Dr. Ian McLeod, professor in the Department
of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences at Western; Jane Seeley of the
Population and Community Health Unit in Western's Schulich School of
Medicine & Dentistry; Dr. Robert Mann, senior scientist at the Centre
for Addiction and Mental Health and associate professor in the
Department of Public Health Science at the University of Toronto; Dr.
Doug Beirness, Traffic Injury Research Foundation, Ottawa; Dr. Robert
Voas, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Maryland; and
Charlie Compton, Transportation Data Center, Transportation Research
Institute, University of Michigan. The study was funded by the United
States National Institutes of Health. - 30 - For more information, please contact Dr. Evelyn Vingilis at (519) 858-5063 ext. 2, or
Christine Roulston, Communications and Public Affairs, at (519) 661-2111
ext. 85165.
| 