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Costs and benefits of a community sobriety checkpoint program
T R Miller1, M S Galbraith, B A Lawrence
1Children's Safety Network Economics and Insurance Resource Center, National Public Services Research Institute, Landover, Maryland 20785, USA.
Objective:
Alcohol-involved crashes cost society more than $100 billion a year. Sobriety checkpoints are effective in apprehending drunk drivers. This article compares the costs and the estimated monetary benefits from a hypothetical community sobriety checkpoint program.
Method:
The analysis is constructed around a hypothetical community with 100,000 licensed drivers. A literature review suggests that a generously funded intensive checkpoint program (156 checkpoints per year) can be expected to reduce alcohol-attributable crashes by about 15%. The benefits (cost savings) of the checkpoint program are calculated using 1993 alcohol-involved crash incidence from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Costs per alcohol-involved crash and the percentage of alcohol-involved crashes attributable to alcohol are updated from published studies.
Results:
Estimated annual savings to the hypothetical community total $7.9 million. This includes $3.1 million for averted fatalities, $4.5 million for averted non-fatal injuries, and $0.3 million for averted property damage. Every $1 spent on a sobriety checkpoint program can be expected to save the community more than $6, including $1.30 of insurer costs.
Conclusions:
An intensive sobriety checkpoint program can save a community more in automobile crash costs than the program costs.