Tougher drunken driving laws and more visible enforcement, such as nighttime roadblocks to check drivers, have helped reduce traffic deaths caused by drinkers. But after falling for 15 years, the percentage of alcohol-related traffic deaths has held steady at a stubborn 40 or 41 percent of the total.
Why?
“As a country, we’ve got a short attention span as far as issues,” said Wendy Hamilton, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. “People believe that the problem is solved. Social issues tend to come and go. It’s just not a big issue right now.”
In 1982 more than 26,000 people died in alcohol-related accidents, 60 percent of traffic deaths that year. “Alcohol-related” means at least one person involved in an accident had been drinking, but was not necessarily legally drunk.
As states adopted tougher laws under federal pressure, the toll from drinking fell to a low of 16,572 in 1999, 40 percent of all traffic fatalities. But alcohol-related deaths increased slightly the next three years before dropping back in 2003 to 17,013, still 40 percent of the total.
Susan Ferguson, vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research and lobbying group backed by major insurers, says motorists ignore the laws because they don’t expect to be caught.
Federal statistics show that only 8.5 percent of the drinking drivers involved in fatal accidents last year had prior convictions for driving while intoxicated. Ferguson believes frequent, high-visibility enforcement such as sobriety checkpoints on highways will do more than tougher laws to convince motorists they shouldn’t drink and drive.
“It’s not about how many people you arrest. It’s about how many people you let know that you’re out there,” she said. “They have to believe they will be caught.”
However, state and local police departments are strapped for cash and resources, so roadblocks are often limited to holiday periods, such as Thanksgiving or New Year’s.
But some say stepped-up enforcement has done it all can to solve the problem, inducing “social drinkers” to drink less or use designated drivers. It’s the problem drinkers who can’t be scared straight.
“Most normal people have changed their behavior, but people with alcoholism problems continue to take risks until they get caught or kill someone,” says Pat Larson, director of victim services for Schaumburg-based Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists.
Take Lauren Zolecki Polzin, 26, who speaks at meetings organized by the alliance.
She was an underage drinker who frequented bars in McHenry County with older friends but never got carded or stopped by police.
“Every time I would wake up in the next morning, I would say I’m not going to do that again,” she said of driving while drunk. “But you don’t think about it before you do it. I was a teenager, and I was invincible.
“It’s totally normal to drink, but too many people aren’t just having a drink or two. I had a drinking problem, though it was not something I admitted to,” Polzin said.
Polzin doesn’t remember getting behind the wheel the night in October 1997 that she struck and killed a man who was bicycling home from work in Crystal Lake. Four hours after the accident, she registered a blood alcohol level of .13, 5 points over the legal limit. She was 19.
She pleaded guilty to reckless homicide and served six months in jail.
July marked the 20th anniversary of a national drinking age of 21, adopted by states under a federal threat to withhold highway funds if they didn’t go along.
Nevertheless, 19 percent of drivers age 16-20 involved in fatal accidents are legally drunk, the same percentage as 45-54-year-olds. Drivers age 21-24 have the highest percentage of any group, 32, and 25-34 is next highest at 27 percent.
Three-fourths of drivers involved in alcohol-related fatal accidents are younger than 35, the “high-risk years,” according to Jeff Michael, director of occupant protection and impaired driving for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
One contributor to the decline in drunk-driving deaths in the 1980s and 1990s was that the bulk of Baby Boomers grew out of those risky ages, Michael said.
But all the 165 million to 170 million members of Generation Y are still younger than 30 and could make drunken driving a greater issue.
“Certainly, there is a high-risk age period, and if there are more people in this group, that is going to drive the numbers,” said Michael.
Any call for action concerning drunken driving usually includes enacting tougher laws and using stricter enforcement.
Ralph Hingston, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, says communities need to demand more enforcement and be more involved in curbing drunken drivers.
“You have to mobilize a community, not just the police. There has to be motivation within the community for police to vigorously enforce the law,” he said.
Elected officials, civic leaders and schools must be involved in a comprehensive effort that includes reducing underage access to alcohol, Hingston said.
One suggestion: Send adults in their early 20s out to buy liquor to see whether they get carded. If they don’t the seller should get a follow-up visit encouraging them to be more vigilant or risk losing their license.
Even drivers convicted of a DUI my not be convinced that they have to change their ways.
James Vanek, 42, a recovering alcoholic who now addresses groups on behalf of the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists, said he received court supervision and paid “a very small fine” for his first drunk driving offense in 1988, when Illinois’ laws were more lenient, and continued to drink and drive.
“I never lost my license for a single day, and I treated it more like a speeding ticket,” he says. “It was a non-event in my life.”
After a a third conviction for drunken driving in 2003, Vanek’s license was revoked. He can’t get it back for four more years.
Now, he sees the same attitude when he speaks to offenders.
“They’re in denial. They’re thinking, `I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not in the same boat as this guy.’ I was the same way,” Vanek said.
“So instead, I aim at their sense of greed. I tell them about the thousands of dollars it will cost them, the years they will be without a license, how it’s going to affect your life.”
For his third conviction, Vanek was fined $2,000, paid his lawyer $4,000 and had his Jeep Wrangler, worth about $15,000, confiscated under state law.
MADD’s Hamilton insists, however, that there should be greater focus on convincing motorists to police their own drinking and driving.
“We’ve done a good job of fixing roads and making cars safer. What we’re not doing is building better drivers and addressing the behavioral issues,” she said, expressing frustration that the role of drivers in traffic deaths gets little attention.
“God forbid that we point a finger and say that people are to blame.”
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
When have you had too many for the road?
When do you know you’ve had too much to drink to safely drive?
That’s difficult to say because a person who has consumed too much alcohol lacks the ability to make that call.
Someone who is dizzy or lightheaded from drinking may ignore such warning signs because they can’t recognize the risks, says Brad Fralick, adviser to Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White on drunken driving issues.
“In your impaired mind, you’re OK, but you’re really not a good judge of whether you’re OK,” Fralick said. “When your judgment is gone, so is your ability to count. That’s why it is so important to designate a driver before you start drinking. Then you don’t have to worry about how many you had.”
On average, a 170-pound male has to consume four drinks within an hour to reach a blood-alcohol content (BAC) of .08 percent, the national legal standard to be considered driving while intoxicated. A 137-pound female would have to consume three drinks in an hour to reach .08.
But a study conducted in 2000 for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that driving skills start to erode for most drivers at .02 percent, or one drink, and can decline significantly by .04.
The study measured reaction times, the ability to stay in lanes, avoid collisions, maintain vehicle speed and other driving skills.
Susan Ferguson, vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research and lobbying group financed by major insurers, says the use of “drunk” instead of “impaired” encourages drinkers to ignore common sense about driving.
“If people aren’t falling down drunk, they say, `I’m fine. I’m OK to drive.’ But you don’t have to be falling down drunk to be impaired,” she said.
Fralick says the average person needs one hour to metabolize, or break down, one drink so it has little effect on their driving ability.
Does that mean two drinks per hour are too many?
“There is no way that a human being can metabolize that much alcohol in an hour,” he said.
Fralick says the effects of two drinks vary based on a person’s gender, weight, ability to absorb alcohol and how much they’ve eaten. Men, on average, can absorb 9 percent more alcohol than women because of their muscle mass.
Having two more drinks in the next hour will compound any effects, because after two hours they will have consumed four drinks, but their body may have metabolized only two.
“It’s not just how many drinks you have consumed in a certain period, it’s that you’ve consumed beyond what the body can metabolize in that time,” he said.
One way to address that is to alternate between alcohol and soft drinks or water.
“If you have a beer, switch to soda and allow your body to absorb and process the alcohol,” Fralick said.
Drinking on an empty stomach speeds alcohol to the bloodstream, where it starts affecting the brain and other organs sooner, said Fralick, formerly the executive director of the Illinois chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
On a full stomach, it can take up to six hours for all alcohol to reach the bloodstream, where it starts to affect the brain and other organs, according to Fralick. On an empty stomach it takes 30 minutes to two hours, he said.
Fatigue also can be a factor. Drinking at 2 a.m. Saturday, at the end of a workweek, is pouring a depressant into a tired body, increasing the effects of alcohol.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism adds that alcohol’s effects are heightened by medicines that depress the central nervous system, such as sleeping pills, antihistamines, antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs and some painkillers. Medicines for diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease also can have harmful interactions with alcohol.
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BAC levels
This is a guideline for the number of drinks containing 0.54 ounces of pure alcohol (one can of beer, one glass of wine or one shot of liquor) in an hour that can elevate blood alcohol concentration to .08 percent, the legal standard for intoxication in the U.S.
%% 170-pound male
1 drink .02-.04
2 drinks .04-.06
3 drinks .06-.08
4 drinks .08-.10
137-pound female
2 drinks .04
3 drinks .08
Source: Illinois Secretary of State
%% The numbers
This chart shows total traffic fatalities, the number of those that were alcohol-related and the percentage since 1982, when a major initiative began to set a blood alcohol level of .08 percent as the nationwide standard for driving while intoxicated.
%% TOTAL ALC-REL %
1982 43,945 26,173 60
83 42,589 24,635 58
84 44,257 24,762 56
85 43,825 23,167 53
86 46,087 25,017 54
87 46,390 24,094 52
88 47,087 23,833 51
89 45,582 22,424 49
90 44,599 22,587 51
91 41,508 20,159 49
92 39,250 18,290 47
93 40,150 17,908 45
94 40,716 17,308 43
95 41,817 17,732 42
96 42,065 17,749 42
97 42,013 16,711 40
98 41,501 16,673 40
99 41,717 16,572 40
2000 41,945 17,380 41
1 42,196 17,400 41
2 42,815 17,419 41
3 42,643 17,013 40
Source: NHTSA
%%
