Front Line Intervention: A Server Training Program

By enabling alcohol servers to recognize customers drinking to a significant level of impairment and to intervene in a non-threatening manner, server training programs can help to prevent customer drunkenness and subsequent drunk driving. Server training became commonplace in the early 1980s, when people injured by drunk drivers began suing the commercial establishments where the driver had become intoxicated, and these establishments saw server training as a way to decrease their liability in such cases and (re)gain favorable insurance rates. In recent years, many municipalities and states began to pass laws requiring alcohol server training. Server training is playing an increasing role in drunk driving prevention, and it is now extended beyond commercial establishments to alcohol servers into a variety of social settings.