Focus on Road Traffic Injuries in Brazil: Selections from the Injury Special Issue

In 2011, approximately 43,000 people died in Brazil as a result of road traffic crashes, with a high percentage associated with alcohol. It’s estimated that between 32.2 and 47% of fatal road traffic victims were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash. While some of the most effective interventions to reduce fatal road traffic crashes associated with alcohol consumption are reducing the legal limit for drinking and driving, mandating random breath testing at sobriety checkpoints or prescribing harsh penalties, a loophole in a 2008 law in Brazil enabled drivers to refuse breath or blood alcohol testing as it may self-incriminate.

The Zero Tolerance Law, which set a breath alcohol concentration of 0.1mg/L of air, was designed to target drink driving and ultimately reduce alcohol-associated road traffic crashes and fatalities. However, because of the loophole, the previously reported prevalence of drink driving is therefore likely a gross underestimation in many cities.

Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit team members, including research program coordinator, Jeffrey C. Lunnen and affiliated faculty, Aruna Chandran worked with collaborators in Brazil to compare the police-reported prevalence of drink driving with self-reported drink driving practices gathered from questionnaires administered at police sobriety checkpoints in two Brazilian cities -- Palmas, Tocantins and Teresina, Piauí – and to estimate a truer prevalence of drinking driving using three corrections. Not surprisingly, the study found that drink driving was pervasive in these two cities, which may or may not be representative of the country as a whole.

In December 2012, after this study was conducted, the Brazil changes its national legislation to effectively close this self-incriminating loophole. Police and traffic officers are now better able to enforce blood alcohol and breath testing.

To read “Challenges associated with drink driving measurement: Combining police and self-reported data to estimate an accurate prevalence in Brazil,” click here.

As part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Road Safety Program, in 2013, JH-IIRU published “Global Road Safety: An Update from Ten Low- and Middle-Income Countries,” a special issue of Injury. This supplemental issue features 12 scientific papers jointly authored by nearly 50 JH-IIRU colleagues and collaborators from 30 institutions and organizations within the participating countries, and presents findings from the monitoring and evaluation activities in the ten participating countries, as well as an evaluation of the trauma component of the program. It highlights the mixed methods approach of data collection and showcases both the successes as well as the challenges of collecting such data in real-world settings.  You can access the entire special issue here