Given these results, the finding that drinking and driving decreased from 1992 to 2002 is highly conditional upon the nature of assessment2. Although the somewhat comparable items suggest a 22% decrease in self-reported past-12 month drinking and driving, lifetime prevalences of the same items appear to have increased by 158%. An additional item assessing drinking while driving in NESARC exhibited the highest past-12 month and lifetime prevalence, resulting in an overall increase in hazardous use as it relates to driving from NLAES to NESARC. Thus, despite the findings from Chou et al. 2005, it is unclear if self-reported rates of hazardous use of alcohol as it relates to driving decreased from 1992 to 2002. However, given the conflicting FARS data concerning rates of fatalities associated with drinking and driving, it seems unlikely that rates of hazardous use truly increased while rates of fatal car crashes attributable to alcohol use decreased. These findings suggest that other factors, such as differences in methodology between the two samples, may better account for the discrepant lifetime estimates between NLAES and NESARC.
