ASHINGTON, May 6 — The new chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board said today that her agency would undertake a major campaign to reduce the disproportionate toll taken by "hard-core" drunken drivers.

The board defined as hard-core those drivers with prior arrests or convictions who continue to drive drunk or people caught driving with a blood alcohol level nearly double the legal limit.

Such people are estimated to make up fewer than 1 percent of all drivers but to make up 27 percent of drivers in fatal accidents.

Ellen G. Engleman, who was sworn in as chairwoman on March 24, said the board, which has only advisory powers, would be more aggressive in urging safety changes before state legislatures and other policy-making bodies.

"We're not a regulatory agency, we're a bully pulpit," Ms. Engleman said. But she added, "we want to hold services daily."

Board members have testified in four states since she became chairwoman, she said, and would testify again next week. "We've asked people to get on the road," she said.

Another board member, John Goglia, said in a separate interview: "In the past the board has handled these issues by generating correspondence. Now the board feels that the presence of one or more board members can make a difference in outcomes in these issues."

One of Ms. Engleman's goals is to coordinate the advocacy work of all five board members and members of the staff.

At a meeting today, the board discussed changes in its "most wanted" list of top priority safety changes, and appeared to have a consensus to add hard-core drunken drivers to the list, elevating the importance of recommendations made to state officials in recent years. Those include establishing a new charge for hard-core offenders, aggravated drunken driving; eliminating plea bargaining that results in conviction for a charge that does not include alcohol; and ending programs that let drivers have their records expunged, typically in exchange for undergoing treatment or performing community service and avoiding additional arrests. Those practices make it harder to identify repeat offenders, experts say.

Other recommendations include greater use of sobriety checkpoints, seizure of cars from drunken drivers, and retention of conviction and arrest records for at least 10 years.

But in contrast to recommendations made to regulatory agencies, like the Federal Aviation Administration, recommendations to state legislatures produce scattered results.

The board did not vote today, deciding instead to determine whether the "most wanted" list, established in 1990 and updated every year, was the most effective. But its consensus on drunken driving was clear. Mark V. Rosenker, the vice chairman, observed that one in seven motor vehicle deaths involve hard-core drunken drivers. (The statistics do not establish whether the drunken driver was at fault, although experts say this is very often the case.)

Ellen Weinstein, a board staff member who is an expert on highway transportation, said that the problem of hard-core drunken driving was getting worse. In 1998, she said, such a driver was involved in 39.9 percent of all fatal accidents that involved alcohol, or 6,370 cases. But by 2001 that had risen to 46.5 percent, she said.

In general, the United States made strong progress on drunken driving for 15 years but recently has been losing ground. In 1982, when it became a national issue, 53 percent of fatal crashes involved someone with a blood alcohol level of at least .08, translating to 23,246 deaths. Fifteen years later, the proportion had fallen to 34 percent, and 14,421 fatalities, a reduction of about a third, despite an enormous increase in the number of vehicles and miles traveled.

But by 2001, the proportion was back up to 35 percent, and 14,953 deaths.

The board also discussed today putting another new item on the list of most-wanted improvements, overhaul of medical examinations for bus and truck drivers. Some health-care providers who perform the examinations are not qualified, the board's staff said, some drivers go "doctor shopping" for one who will approve them, and some simply forge medical forms obtained on the Internet. Other highway recommendations include stronger "graduated licensing" programs, in which new drivers get their licenses with restrictions on when they can drive and how many passengers they can carry, and recommendations on stronger laws on seat belt use.