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A year-ending post with a pre-party reminder of the harms of drinking and driving

By Douglas Berman

Inspired in part by this news report from CNN, headlined “Barkley ‘disappointed’ after DUI arrest,” I will conclude my postings for 2008 with a year-end reminder about the harms of the crime of drinking and driving.  As regular readers know, I am often amazed and annoyed that even repeat drunk driving offenses rarely lead to severe punishments — especially given the extreme sentences often imposed on other “risk-regulation” crimes like felon-in-possession gun laws or failure-to-register sex offender laws.  The reason I am annoyed is principally because drinking and driving results in more avoidable deaths and other harms than most other crimes combined. 

Let’s start with deaths.  As detailed in this official NTHSA report, about 13,000 Americans are killed each and every year in alcohol-impaired driving crashes.  In other words, on average, more than 35 people die in alcohol-impaired driving crashes every single day.  And, as this press release highlights, these deaths increase during the winter holidays.

Though statistics concerning physical injuries and non-fatal crashes are harder to find, MADD reports here that perhaps as many as half a million people are injured each year in crashes where police reported that alcohol was present and that roughly “three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some time in their lives.”

For those who want to focus on economic costs, MADD also provides this sobering accounting: “Alcohol-related crashes in the United States cost the public an estimated $114.3 billion in 2000, including $51.1 billion in monetary costs and an estimated $63.2 billion in quality of life losses. People other than the drinking driver paid $71.6 billion of the alcohol-related crash bill, which is 63 percent of the total cost of these crashes.”  Or consider this recent report of a single repeat drunk driver who cost the Wisconsin taxpayers $365,000.

The good news is that drunk driving deaths have declined over the last few decades and more and more persons view drinking and driving to be a serious crime.  Also, though I frequently call for harsher sentences from repeat drunk drivers, I fully recognize that tougher punishments is not the sole or even best solution.  Indeed, I hope that technocorrections provide a new means to deal with this serious crime, and I was pleased to see this press report indicating that Illinois is going to be requiring “breath-alcohol ignition-interlock device installed” in the cars of DWI first offenders.  (Notably, as reported here, Washington state is trying out ignition locks for those with suspended licenses.  I believe Alaska has a new law with ignition locks, too.)

In other words, let’s all be safe out there tonight as we ring in the new year!

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