Abstract for: Mechanisms underlying early adoption of restrictive laws to control alcohol impaired driving

Alcohol‑impaired driving remains a leading contributor to fatal traffic crashes. In 2023, 12,429 people died in alcohol‑impaired crashes in the United States—one fatality every 42 minutes We identified the states that enacted three restrictive statutes proactively. We will use hearings related to legislation of restrictive laws in five states (California, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington) to identify drivers and barriers of early adoption and develop a causal loop diagram that maps the mechanisms in these five states. To date, we have coded the transcript of a Senate hearing about “fighting drunk driving” in New Mexico and developed a preliminary causal loop diagram (CLD) for the state [4]. The hearing featured testimony from key stakeholders—a New Mexico state senator, representatives from the NMDOT and NHTSA, the mayor of Albuquerque, the chief of police, an emergency‑medicine physician, and a representative of the Distilled Spirits Council—who testified, providing rich qualitative data on the facilitators and barriers to addressing alcohol-impaired driving. Understanding the mechanisms that facilitate the early adoption of restrictive drinking‑and‑driving laws, and how those mechanisms interact to affect alcohol‑related crash fatalities, provides insight into the complex problem of driving after drinking and can be instructive and informative in designing strategies that effectively reduce preventable deaths.