Drinkers and their Driving: Compliance with Drink-Driving Legislation in Four Australian States

This paper was to discuss drivers and their drinking, using data from a recent national study which investigated the behaviour, experiences, and attitudes towards drink-driving of Australian drivers. The reversal of the title is not merely a frivolous gesture, but reflects the author's conviction that the focus should be widened beyond a concern with the way in which some drivers consume alcohol, thereby placing themselves and the community at risk, to all drivers who consume alcohol (75 per cent of this sample) and the circumstances under which they find it easy or difficult to comply with drink-driving legislation. This understanding is surely necessary if we are to design preventions that take human factors into account. This paper, then, looks at compliance rather than offending, and asks the basic question 'How do people who drink manage their driving?'. Focusing on the drinker recognises that Australia is a country where alcohol is intricately entwined in almost every leisure, and many business activities, and where one of the worst epithets that can be levelled at an individual is that of 'wowser ' (Horne, 1971). At the same time, sprawling cities, vast hinterlands and poor public transport combine to make car ownership not only desirable but almost essential, so that a majority of people travel by car to and from their leisure and recreational pursuits. Small wonder, then, that driving afte