CARRS–Q student and recent RTIRN partner Mr. George Jia wins Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Post Graduate Award to undertake research into Drink Driving.
CARRS-Q will lend its considerable expertise to China to try to determine why the nation has so many drink driving related road crashes. CARRS-Q Researcher George Jia said while China owned just 3% of the world’s vehicles, it accounted for approximately 15% or 100,000 of the world’s annual fatal road accidents. That’s according to official Chinese figures, although the World Health Organization estimates the true figure is more than twice as high.
Mr Jia said in 2009 Chinese police caught 313,000 drink drivers while nearly 6,000 drink driving related accidents resulted in 2,665 deaths.
“Not only is drink driving a significant contributor to car crashes in China but as the country’s economy prospers the number of cars on the road is increasing and so too is the number of people who drive while under the influence of alcohol,” he said.
“Drink driving is a big problem and my research will look at people’s attitudes and beliefs about drink driving to try to find out whether social and cultural factors are at work here, and whether police enforcement has an impact.
“Culturally, the Chinese like to celebrate, but there appears to be a lack of information on the causes and impact of drink driving.” He will investigate the attitudes of general drivers and drink driving offenders, police perceptions and experiences of random breath testing, and the impacts of other drink driving sanctions including fines.
Once the Chinese data is collected, Mr Jia will compare drink driving legislation between Australia and China with the aim of providing practical suggestions to policy makers in China on how to reduce the rate of alcohol-related road deaths and crashes in the country.
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About RTIRN The Road Traffic Injuries Research Network (RTIRN) is a partnership of more than 517 individuals and institutions from 63 countries that collaborate to further research into the impact and causes of road traffic injuries in low and middle-income countries, and to identify appropriate interventions to the problem. RTIRN’s vision is to reduce the burden of road traffic injuries through the promotion, conduct and utilization of research. For more information about RTIRN, please visit www.rtirn.net.