UC Irvine’s Dr. Federico Vaca, one of the nation’s leading researchers on motor vehicle crash injuries and prevention, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to explore the potential of an age-based, early-alcohol-exposure risk assessment policy for crash injury reduction and lifesaving effects among young drivers.

This NIH-funded study is crucial, Vaca said, because the national comprehensive societal cost of motor vehicle crashes is estimated to be over $1.365 trillion annually, with $296 billion attributable to accidents caused by over-the-limit blood alcohol concentrations. In 2022, there were 13,524 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in the United States, accounting for 32 percent of all annual crash fatalities (42,514 deaths). In the last 10 years, the national DUI fatality rate has increased by 24 percent. Drivers between 21 and 24 are among the most vulnerable and have the highest proportion of alcohol-related fatal crashes. With previous support from the NIAAA, Vaca and his team have extensively studied the behaviors of young adults who ride with impaired drivers and who drive while impaired.

Vaca is a professor and executive vice chair in the School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine. Over the last 20 years, his research has focused on injury science – encompassing motor vehicle crash injury epidemiology and prevention – and related health disparities among U.S. youth and Latino populations.