Word: wagenaar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Alexander Wagenaar, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida's College of Medicine and lead author of the study, says that the reason revoking a drunk driver's license right away works better than waiting until after a conviction, which can take up to a year in some states, is simple timing: if you do something wrong, you should suffer the consequences immediately. It's a basic behavior-curbing tenet called negative reinforcement that works on rats in the lab, and on humans just as well. "The speed with which the punishment is applied is very important...
...study, Wagenaar looked at monthly statistics on fatal alcohol-related car crashes in 46 U.S. states over 26 years - from January 1976 to December 2002 - to analyze the effectiveness of such laws. Wagenaar found that in the states that had implemented immediate driver's license-suspension policies, alcohol-related crashes declined pretty much across the board after the passage of the law. "The study shows very clearly an intervention that works if states want to reduce the death rate due to these alcohol-related crashes," he said...
...license-revocation laws on the books. The nine that don't are Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Tennessee. Most of these states have policies that allow officers to revoke a driver's license after conviction, or immediately with repeat offenders, but Wagenaar's study found that such laws do little to deter drunk driving or to reduce fatalities...
...usually a kind of diffusion process," Wagenaar says. "Most states do it and then there's a handful of states that are slow and don't pay attention to the data that's accumulating or have interest groups influencing them." Wagenaar insists that such license-revocation laws are a step in the right direction, though critics argue that people will continue to drive, even without a license. Case in point: Lindsay Lohan's friend Paris Hilton spent three weeks in jail last month for that offense...
...That's just crazy," Wagenaar said. "It's like saying here's a new method to reduce cancer by 10%, but just because some other cancer still causes a death, you say that the first isn't effective? That's just not the case. The fact that some drivers still drive under a suspended license is true, but it's also true that the death rate is down and the fatal crash rate is down...