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© 1987 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (Biomedical Division)
Alcohol, drugs and traffic safety — T 8 6
P.C. Noordzij and R. Roszbach, editors.
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BRITAIN'S CHRISTMAS CRUSADE AGAINST DRINKING AND DRIVING
H. LAURENCE ROSS
Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131
(USA)
INTRODUCTION
During the Christmas holiday period of 1983, the traveler in Britain could
not escape notice of a barrage of information about the legal threat to drivers
with alcohol concentrations "over the limit."
Activities of the police in de­
tecting and apprehending drunk drivers, and of the judiciary in convicting and
punishing them, were prominently featured in the national press.
Although
Christmas "campaigns" by law enforcement had become something of a tradition in
Britain since the enactment of the Road Safety Act of 1967, this one seemed
broader and deeper than any in recent years.
The events are described as a "Christmas Crusade," but this should not be
understood as a planned and organized campaign with central direction.
Rather,
the media barrage was the result of several coincidental events and interventions,
undertaken with little coordination.
Indeed, the collation of these events into
a Crusade seems to have been accomplished by the press, which highlighted and
related the disparate activities of the Department of Transport, several police
forces, and one Magistrates' Court, yielding a picture of a national deterrent
effort.
THE INTERVENTION
The components of the Crusade were as follows:
First,
the Department of Transport's annual traffic safety campaign was more
limited and more focused on threatening punishment for drinking drivers than it
had been in previous years.
In keeping with governmental austerity principles
of the Thatcher administration, less money was available than in previous years,
necessitating a narrowing of the campaign.
The theme of the restricted campaign
was influenced by the inception during the year of provisions of the Transport
Act of 1981 which changed police procedure for handling drink-driving charges.
Among other things, this law introduced evidential breath-testing devices, thus
promising increased efficiency and consequently increased certainty of appre­
hension for the pool of drunk drivers, given constant police resources.
Second, traditional Christmas crackdowns on drinking and driving on the part
of many local police agencies tied in well with the Government's publicity cam­
paign, and they were exploited as elements in that campaign.
The unusually,
stringent deterrent campaign of the Nottinghamshire Constabulary attracted media
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attention to police efforts generally.
Third, the progress of numerous drunk-driving charges under the new evidential
breath-testing procedure had been stayed for several months until a leading case
came down on December 9, permitting the courts to resume these postponed cases,
and producing a wave of drunk-driving convictions just before Christmas.
Fourth, the press "discovered" that one Magistrates' Court, that of Grays in
Essex, just outside London, was employing rarely-utilized powers to detain some
drunk drivers for up to four days in police cells.
Several such detentions were
ordered in December, highlighting the practice, and there was considerable public
discussion about its legitimacy and advisability.
Imprisonment for drunk
drivers had been virtually unheard of in routine cases in Britain, and the pro­
cedure dispensed with the usual precautions accompanying sentences of imprison­
ment.
Although few detentions were administered outside Grays, that court had
set a precedent which suggested the possibility of more severe punishments for
drunk driving throughout Britain.
Fifth, a few unusually poignant or colorful cases of drunk driving were noted
in the sensationalist press, leading to charges of sentencing inequity under the
law, to proposals for broader testing and more severe penalties for drunk
drivers, and to general discussion that served to remind the public of the de­
terrent threat posed by the law.
ANALYSIS
The Christmas Crusade was, for fortuitous reasons, one of the most intensive
enforcement an,d publicity blitzes ever directed at drunk driving in England and
Wales.
On the basis of prior research findings one would expect that any effect
in terms of reduced drunk driving would occur immediately, in December of 1983,
and that it would not endure long after the termination of seasonal efforts on
New Years Day 1984.
In the eyes of observers on the spot, the Christmas Crusade was a success.
Most reports from individuals were of course based only on commonsense im­
pressions, without scientific basis or pretention, but they need not be dis­
regarded.
Among the most interested observers were licensees of public houses, many of
whom were quoted in the press bemoaning the effects of the Crusade on their
businesses.
I share the words of a pub-keeper in Grays:
The magistrates proved their point, as far as my
business goes . . . Police custody worked —
it
worked for me, it affected my business drastically.
The police Constabularies tended to measure the effectivenss of their cam-
627
paigns in terms of the numbers bf breath tests given and of drunk-driving
charges laid.
The Chief Constable of Sussex found encouragement in the fact
that it had only been necessary to breath-test one in ten of drivers stopped.
"This seems to indicate a growing awareness among the public of the dangers of
drinking and driving."
In contrast, the Nottinghamshire force found encourage­
ment in the lower proportion of the many breath-tested drivers who were found
to have exceeded the limit.
In Grays, only one breath test was given during
the Christmas period, interpreted by the police as confirmation of a "quite
remarkable change that has been obvious to us all."
Even a bitter critic of
the crackdown depicted Grays as suffering "an outbreak of sobriety rarely seen
outside an Arab state."
Few observers based their conclusions on statistics of serious crashes, which
would furnish a relatively reliable and valid index of drunk driving as well as
a policy— relevant criterion of effectiveness in its own right.
Indeed, post­
intervention experience of sufficient length to permit valid conclusions about
the effect of the Christmas Crusade would not have been available in January
1984.
However, with the collaboration of Dr. Richard McCleary, it has been
possible to perform such an analysis with data available through the end of
that year.
To test the hypothesis that the Crusade reduced drunk driving our analysis
utilized the index of total automobile-crash-related fatalities.
This is a
reasonable index, since about half of these fatalities would be expected to in­
volve alcohol, and if drunk driving were importantly reduced the index should
reflect that fact,
"He obtained computer print-outs of this statistic from the
Department of Transport, on a monthly basis f r o m :1977 through 1984.
This series
was sufficiently long, before and after the Crusade, to be modeled for an inter­
vention analysis.
We found that the series declined significantly and steeply,
by about 23 percent in fact, precisely during the month of the Christmas Cru­
sade.
No other December during the years in question showed a statistically '
significant drop in the index.
We also looked at January 1984 and found a
diminished reduction in the fatality series.
Although this January reduction
was not statistically Significant, its considerable magnitude in the total series
and in all analyzed subseries demands explanation.
We interpret it as a re­
sidual of the effect of the crackdown.
This analysis provides support for the hypothesis
the Christmas. Crusade.
of a deterrent effect for
Since the index is only approximately related to drunk
driving, the deterrent effect of the intervention can be considered quite power­
ful.
Unfortunately, confidence in this finding must be restrained by the fact that
no confirmation of the effect was found in the series of weekend night casual­
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ties, which is on its face an even more valid index of drunk driving.
However,
that index may be unreliable in that it is based on a very small data base, and
in the months of our analysis there seemed to be some extraordinary and unex­
plained accumulations of casualties on particular evenings that may have con­
founded the analysis.
Overall, we cast our lot with the original interpretation,
partly because it rests on a good-sized data base that yields strong statistical
significance for the effect, and partly because a control series of daytime
fatalities --much less likely to involve drunk driving —
shows only a small and
insignificant reduction.
CONCLUSION
In sum, the experience of the Christmas Crusade reinforces the expectation
that deterrent interventions involving highly publicized campaigns of increas­
ing punishment for illegal behavior can be successful over a limited time period.
The extent to which the increased severity of punishment in Grays led to changes
in the perception of the threat more generally in Britain cannot be ascertained
through available data.
Our interpretation is that the severity of perceived
punishment would not have been changed beyond Grays —
but that the event
a miniscule jurisdiction—
in Grays helped obtain considerable publicity for the balance
of the events constituting the Crusade, which were aimed at increasing the cer­
tainty of punishment.