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Crashes involving alcohol-impaired driving or driving under influence (DUI) are more likely to increase crash probability and severity. Many countries have adopted increasingly stringent policies in curbing DUI. Nevertheless, more and more studies show that while the total number of DUIs has reduced as a whole, DUI recidivism remains challenging. As such, this study seeks to research into whether it is possible to identify frequent DUI recidivists based on their traffic offense history, so that effective countermeasure could be put in place and in time. This study proposes using the drivers' traffic offense history and length of duration between two DUIs, the duration of re-offending, to identify frequent DUI recidivists. This approach is not only widely adopted in public health, but is also flexible in accommodating many modeling issues such as data censoring, recurrent events, and the inclusion of time-varying covariates to address questions like whether the probability of recidivism increases or decreases with subsequent DUI offenses or other traffic offenses or violations. Our major results show that: (1) For all drivers caught for a DUI, 10 % of them would be caught for another DUI within a year; (2) In contrast, the same one-year recidivism probability for those who accumulated two DUIs and two run-the-red-light could be as high as 17 %; (3) Each subsequent DUI increased the probability of a further DUI offense by 57 %; and (4) Each additional DUI offense was associated with 45 % increase in probability of being involved in a crash involving DUI. Overall, there are clear links between a driver's history of traffic offenses, DUI recidivism, and crash involvement, which could provide valuable information for authorities to profile potential recidivists and apply preventative measures in advance to reduce DUI-related crashes.

Science and technology have been long-standing dimensions of the political legitimation of monarchic, shaikhly and imperial rule in the modern Gulf. Scientific development has been supported by attendant sociotechnical imaginaries, but these imaginaries have not been without fissures or contradictions. In the modern Gulf sheikhdoms, sociotechnical imaginaries were fashioned at the intersection of local, regional, and imperial processes. A range of actors participated in these contestations, drawing on shifting cultural ideas about human frailty and progress, continuing social and economic exchanges across the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean, and varying experiences of imperial constraint and possibility. This article examines how Islamic legal actors in Qatar shaped sociotechnical contestations in the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on medical technology and the problem of drunk driving in the 1960s, I show how Islamic procedural law became connected to new regimes of expertise and modern forms of power inextricably tied to the Qatari nation-state. I suggest that the Islamic legal concepts mobilized by the ulama, which initially served to protect a space of Muslim privacy against technological anonymity and the regulatory ambitions of the modern state, became increasingly unintelligible as the expansive logics of state bureaucracy were adopted and naturalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a sample of 78,160 cases involving adults who pleaded guilty to drunk driving in a New South Wales (NSW) court between 2014 and 2019 to assess the contribution of neighbourhood disadvantage to charge dismissal. Data are analysed using a multilevel random effects model with controls for magistrate identity and legal factors that must be considered by the magistrate when deciding whether to dismiss a PCA charge against an offender. Findings indicate that magistrates with a higher dismissal rate are more lenient towards individuals from advantaged or highly advantaged socio-economic neighbourhoods. Magistrates with a lower dismissal rate, are less lenient toward those from advantaged or highly advantaged socio-economic neighbourhoods. Neighbourhood disadvantage has a statistically significant effect on judicial willingness to dismiss a charge of drink driving and record no conviction. The effect is small but affects many people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]