title: Impact of the 1994 alcohol production and sales deregulation policy on traffic crashes and fatalities in Japan.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  . Many studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between alcohol availability and traffic crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers. The present analysis focuses on the evaluation of the impact of alcohol availability on the Japanese population by comparing fatal and nonfatal motor vehicle crash rates before and after implementation of the alcohol deregulation policy in 1994. Participants and method. Poisson regression with robust standard error was used to model the before-to-after change in incidence rate ratios (IRRs) in the population. To control for potential confounders, per capita alcohol consumption, unemployment rate, and vehicle miles travelled (VMT) were also added to the model. The exponents of the fitted coefficients are equivalent to the IRRs.
  
  
  RESULTS
  . Implementation of the policy deregulating alcohol sales and production did not appear to increase traffic fatalities and other traffic crashes in Japan. In the overall study results, nighttime fatalities were reduced statistically significantly by 6% since the implementation of the alcohol deregulation policy in 1994. Discussion. Contrary to previous research, the findings of this study demonstrated lower rates of fatalities and higher compliance with alcohol-related driving legislation. Further well-designed, nonaligned studies on alcohol availability and traffic fatalities in other countries are urgently needed.
authors.affiliation: British Columbia Injury Research and Prevention Unit, Vancouver, BC, Canada. edesap@cw.bc.ca
authors.forename: Ediriweera
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Desapriya
authors.forename: Takeo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fujiwara
authors.forename: Namrata
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dutt
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Arason
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pike
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000401:mortality* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000434:Alcoholic Beverages / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003132:Commerce / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D033161:Government Regulation; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D013997:Time Factors