Alcohol policies and highway vehicle fatalities

This study investigates the impact of beer taxes and a variety of alcohol-control policies on motor vehicle fatality rates. Special attention is paid to omitted variables biases resulting from failing to adequately control for grassroots efforts to reduce drunk driving, the enactment of other laws which simultaneously operate to reduce highway fatalities, and the economic conditions existing at the time the legislation is passed. In the preferred models, most of the regulations have little or no impact on traffic mortality. By contrast, higher beer taxes are associated with reductions in crash deaths and this result is relatively robust across specifications.