Associate Professor Lyndel Bates, from Griffith Criminology Institute, was awarded $1,286,884 for her project, ‘Using an impaired driving context to enhance deterrence’ through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship.
The project aims to investigate how impaired driving is policed by addressing three main limitations of the widely used deterrence theory.
“I’m incredibly honoured to be named one of the three Griffith University researchers awarded an ARC Future Fellowship,” she says.
“I am looking forward to looking at how we can improve road safety and policing practices in the impaired driving space.”
This project expects to generate new knowledge on how to best apply deterrence theory while staying on top of new drug regulations, such as medicinal cannabis being legally prescribed in Australia.
Expected outcomes include the development of new and more effective road policing procedures tailored to address the limitations of deterrence theory when applied to drug impaired drivers.
“This should provide significant benefits, such as the development of state-of-the-art road policing methods with the potential to decrease the number of impaired drivers on the road, and thus improve road safety,” A/Prof. Bates says.
“Australia is currently experiencing alarming drug driving statistics, increasing the risk for those drivers of being involved in a traffic crash. In 2024, every sixth fatality on Queensland roads involved a drug impaired driver and every seventh involved a drunk driver.
“While deterrence theory, which is the foundation stone of our current road policing methods, is very effective deterring alcohol impaired drivers, it can’t be applied the same way for drug impaired drivers.”
Project to save lives, and funds
By studying the limitations of deterrence theory when applied to drug impaired drivers, this project will examine ways to reduce drug impaired driving more effectively which is particularly important given its increase in recent years.
“A direct benefit to the Australian community from this project includes the design of strategies to provide safer roads by reducing drug impaired driving and therefore road trauma,” A/Prof. Bates says.
“Given that each fatal crash cost is $2.9 million, this would also provide significant economic savings.
“The outcomes of this research will be promoted broadly to stakeholder groups and organisations through presentations at conferences, hosting workshops, making plain language summaries of the results available and working directly with police, government and non-government agencies.”
Associate Professor Bates possesses a distinguished research profile underscored by a robust track record of high-quality outputs, extensive research training and mentoring.
The Future Fellowship is critical in providing A/Prof. Bates with the opportunity to undertake the foundation theoretical work that will enable her to develop innovative, evidence-based and theoretically informed road policing interventions in the future.
A big congratulations to all of the Griffith University researchers who are embarking on unique scientific and behavioural research endeavours through their successful Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowships in 2025.
