Drunk Driving Deaths Down

Big Drop in Drunk-Driving Deaths - Tough Laws, Awareness Credited

Sunday, January 4, 2004

By Allison Steele

Monitor Staff

In 1982, 111 people were killed in drunk-driving deaths on New Hampshire roads. In 2002: just 51.

Drunk-driving deaths on New Hampshire roads have decreased dramatically in the last 20 years, a decline attributed to a combination of public awareness and tough new laws.

In 1982, 111 people were killed in alcohol-related accidents in New Hampshire. In 1992, that figure had dropped to just 40, an all-time low. In 2002, it was 51.

The federal government compares drunk driving fatalities to the total number of highway miles driven each year. Measured that way, New Hampshire's rate has declined 74 percent over 20 years.

Most of the rest of the country has seen similar declines, a recent study by the federal Department of Transportation shows. But nationwide, the number of drunk-driving deaths has begun creeping upward again in the past three years.

Experts see the numbers as evidence that some drivers may be growing inured to the warnings of the danger of impaired driving.

"A lot of people thought this problem was solved a long time ago," said Kathryn Henry, spokeswoman for the national Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "We saw tremendous progress in the '80s and '90s. And now it's flattened out."

A New World

For New Hampshire police officers, the dramatic decline over the past two decades has meant significant changes in their work.

In Henniker, for example, New Year's Eve 1989 was one busy night for the police department. That was the year the department began 24-hour coverage; until then, officers had stopped work at 1 a.m. The additional patrols pulled in dozens of drunk-driving arrests that year, said Chief Tim Russell, and similar numbers in the years that followed.

But by the mid-1990s, driving while intoxicated arrests were dropping off. Now, New Year's Eve and other traditionally driver-risky holidays are among the department's quietest nights. This year was no different: no major accidents, no drunk-driving fatalities.

"We see less (DWIs) on those nights because they know we're out in force," Russell said. "They carpool; they designate a driver. If people would practice the same alternative driving plans year round as they do on New Year's, we wouldn't have nearly so much of a problem."

New Hampshire law now takes drunk driving fairly seriously: a mandatory 90-day license revocation for a first offense, and a Class B felony conviction for a third. In 1994, the state lowered the level of blood alcohol required to be considered drunk from 0.10 to 0.08. A law that took effect Thursday requires all first-time drunken drivers to complete an impaired driver intervention program.

And state lawmakers have proposed laws to further criminalize drunk driving. A bill sponsored by state Reps. Richard Morris and David Welch would increase jail time for second-time offenders and make a first-time offense a misdemeanor instead of a violation.

Welch said he hoped the bill would also emphasize the treatment of alcohol problems. Since drunk driving is often an indication of a serious drinking problem, he said stiffer penalties could help force people into treatment programs.

"We're hoping if we make punishments a little tougher, the idea will be that it could get some people into treatment sooner," he said. "My feeling has always been that a first offender ought to have jail time. I'm a very strong proponent of getting the message out there that if you drink and drive, you're going to go to jail."

'A jetliner every two days'

Across the country, more than 17,000 people died in alcohol-related crashes in 2002, said Henry, about 41 percent of all traffic fatalities. Large as that number may be, in 1982 the statistics were far more grim: more than 26,000 people.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving was born in the early 1980s to target the problem, and groups like DARE started devoting more attention to drunk driving. Public awareness campaigns throughout the 1980s and '90s encouraged partygoers to call cabs, stay overnight or use designated drivers, and the country's rate of alcohol-related driving deaths decreased steadily for almost two decades.

But now, Henry said, the "don't drink and drive" campaigns that were so successful in years past have become part of the national backdrop. The country's youngest generation of drivers, the population most at risk for drunk-driving deaths, pays less attention to the rhetoric than did teenagers and young adults in years past. And each year, a new generation of drivers turns 21.

"We lose enough people to fill the equivalent of a jetliner every two days to impaired driving," Henry said. "If that happened, if planes were falling out of the sky, this would be a huge issue on the front page of every newspaper. But this is such an insidious problem. It happens in remote places, every day, every 32 minutes."

Not only are people more aware now of the dangers of driving while impaired, cars are safer and laws in many states are stricter than they were in 1982. However, Henry said, there remain dramatic inconsistencies nationwide about how to deal with drunk-driving offenders. While some states have adopted laws aimed at cracking down on drunk driving, offenders in other states are often not prosecuted fully and get off with relatively light punishments. Though the legal intoxication limit has been designated as a blood alcohol level of 0.08 in most states, a handful of states have left it at 0.10.

As states have lowered the legal blood alcohol level, the rate of drunk-driving deaths often drop immediately. Drunk-driving deaths were increasing in Rhode Island, with the state seeing a 30 percent increase in fatalities over the past three years. In 2000 the legal blood alcohol limit was changed to 0.08, and in the past year the deaths have dropped by 7 percent. Colorado, one of the last states to maintain a 0.10 blood alcohol level, has made consistently less progress than the rest of the country in curbing the numbers of people killed in drunk-driving crashes.

In the nine years since New Hampshire lowered its blood-alcohol level, drunk-driving deaths have fluctuated between 50 and 67 a year.

Public Awareness

For many drivers, the threat of a fatal drunk-driving accident is still more than enough to guide them into safe choices, said Don Lesperance, owner of the Lakes Region Driver's Education school. As with all driving schools certified by the state, he's required to teach a minimum of eight hours about impaired driving. He doesn't show the gruesome movies about carnage on the highways, opting instead for films about families that experience a death or movies that illuminate the circumstances that can lead to tragic accidents.

"You look around the room and the kids are practically crying by the end," he said. "If we're making a difference (in drunk-driving deaths) that's also a sign of the times, that kids are much smarter than that. And not just about the ramifications of losing their license, in terms of losing their friends."

In addition to films, handouts and books, Lesperance said most kids hear speakers on drunk driving in school. And sadly, many know someone who died in an alcohol-related accident by the time they reach high school.

"There's been such a change in social attitudes," he said. "Parents these days tell their kids to call them and tell them to come get them if they don't have any other way of getting home. My parents didn't talk to me like that. And not that it always works that way, but it makes a huge difference as far as a kid's mindset goes. They know they have options."

Making people aware of those options is key, as far as organizations like Henry's are concerned. In light of the recent upswing in drunk-driving fatalities, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is preparing to unveil a new round of public awareness campaigns. These will go beyond the usual drunk-driving message, Henry said, and focus on "buzz driving."

"A lot of these people think you have to be rip-roaring drunk to be considered impaired," she said. "We're trying to get into the language that hey, maybe it's not okay to drive if you've just had a few. Do you want to be flown in a plane by a pilot who's just had a few? Do you want to be operated on by someone who's just had a few?"

The idea is not to preach against alcohol, Henry said, but to try and reach some of the people for whom the years of "don't drink and drive" has not worked.

"The bottom line is that there's a certain amount of the population you can reach with public awareness, and those are the people who will designate a driver, who will make the decision not to take a chance," Henry said.

"It's similar to what you saw with the AIDS awareness movement, encouraging people to use condoms. It was something they can grab onto. It worked really well, and it does work really well. But now there's a whole new generation who are used to hearing it, and they need something else."