Do Blue Laws Save Lives Summary

I chose to write about “Do Blue Laws Save Lives? The Effect of Sunday Alcohol Sales Bans on Fatal Vehicle Accidents” by Michael F. Lovenheim and Daniel P. Steefel, which featured in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management in Fall of 2011. I chose this article because it relates to my paper topic as it looks at the relationship between a specific law and its effect on drunk driving. In addition, I also just found the topic very interesting as it focuses on a law that came about before the separation of the church and the state happened. So it is interesting to see if a law that has archaic origins has any major relevance or effect on a modern day problem. Finally, this paper also contributes another piece to the large puzzle of how to solve our problem with drunk driving specifically by looking at what works and what doesn't work in stopping it.
It is important to note that the authors are not arguing against blue laws but rather just providing evidence that blue laws do not have major public health benefits in terms of fatal accidents. That being said that authors try to demonstrate their point by first focusing on how blue laws, which prevent the sale of alcohol from off-premise locations i.e. grocery stores, on Sunday, has a minimal effect on the fatal accident rate between states that recently repealed blue laws, still have blue laws and states that never had blue laws. The authors take this idea further by exemplifying how one of the only groups with meaningful changes in their fatal accident rates are men under-21 who already cannot legally buy alcohol from anywhere (2011, Page