DUI death rate down sharply

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002 | 11:11 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- The nation's alcohol-related traffic death rate has dropped by more than half during the past 20 years, and Nevada is among the states that have shown the greatest improvement, a government study shows.

According to the study by the National Highway Safety Administration, Nevada improved from a rate of 2.98 DUI fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled to a rate of 0.73, a 76 percent improvement. The improvement was second only to Vermont, which improved by 80 percent from a rate of 1.76 to 0.36.

"That kind of makes me laugh," said Erin Breen, director of the Safe Communities Partnership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She said she expects alcohol-related traffic deaths to be up this year compared with last year.

"We're having a terrible year," she said.

But Nevada Highway Patrol spokesman Trooper Jim Olschlager said that there are a variety of factors that have resulted in fewer drunken driving deaths in Nevada and across the country.

"One thing is that people know about the dangers of drunk driving now," Olschlager said. "Twenty years ago no one cared, but now it's constantly on the news and people are more aware."

Other factors include safer cars, better medical care and stricter laws, Olschlager said.

"Ten years ago drunk driving was a citation-and-release offense, now you go right to jail," Olschlager said. "Combine that with seat-belt laws, airbags and what doctors are able to do when we get them patients within that first critical hour after an accident, and you get some idea about why its getting better."

Technology such as air bags and better seat belts has helped, but a cultural shift in the past 20 years has had the most dramatic effect, Breen said.

"It's no longer acceptable to the average person to drive drunk," she said. "When you look at the alcohol-related crashes that happen now ... the average in Nevada is 0.18. We're talking hard-core drinkers. The average person knows 'I'm too drunk to drive.' "

She gave credit for a lot of that change to groups like Stop DUI, which have raised the awareness of the dangers of drinking and driving, as well as to the state Legislature, which has increased penalties for drunken driving.

"The average driver in an alcohol-related fatality is doing eight years behind bars. That's a huge deterrent," she said.

The chances of being killed by a driver who's been drinking still vary significantly from state to state.

The federal government's most comprehensive look at drunken driving accidents over the past two decades shows that gains in the fight against drunken driving have been widely disproportionate across the country.

Drivers in South Carolina, the state with the highest death rate, for example, are four times more likely to die in alcohol-related traffic accidents than drivers in Utah, the state with the lowest death rate.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration compiled the state-by-state statistics to encourage states at the bottom of the rankings to get tough on drivers who drink. The agency and law enforcement in every state have said they will crack down on drunken and drugged drivers with sobriety checkpoints and increased patrols from Dec. 20 through Jan. 5, the kickoff to a yearlong effort to curb impaired driving.

Metro Police have routinely increased the number of checkpoints during the holidays, said Sgt. Rick Barela, a department spokesman.

Along with checkpoints and enforcement activities, Metro also focuses on education and accident investigation, Barela said.

The number of people killed in alcohol-related crashes in the United States has risen slightly since 1999, ending years of steady decline. Last year, 17,448 were killed, accounting for 41 percent of all U.S. traffic deaths.

"The problem of drunk driving is going to be with us for a long time," Olschlager said. "At anytime about 30 percent of the people out on the road are under the influence of something."

Last year in Southern Nevada, troopers investigated about 2,150 DUI incidents, or about one a week for each of the approximately 50 troopers working the area at the time, Olschlager said.

NHTSA defines an alcohol-related fatality as any death that occurred in an accident where a driver, pedestrian or cyclist had alcohol detected in their blood. In most states, it is legal to drive with less than 0.08 percent blood alcohol content. In Nevada, the threshold is 0.10.

Last year, the alcohol-related death rate nationwide was 0.63 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, compared to 1.64 in 1982. That year, U.S. traffic deaths connected to alcohol use totaled 26,173, or 60 percent of all U.S. traffic deaths.

Today, Puerto Rico's alcohol-related death rate is higher than any state's -- 1.38 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled during 2001. South Carolina, Montana, Louisiana and the District of Columbia also have rates of more than one death for every 100 million vehicle miles.

States with the best records are Utah, Vermont, New York, Minnesota, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia, Indiana and California -- all at or below one-half death for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled.

After 1982, a national movement to curb drinking and driving began to gain momentum.

In the early 1980s, President Reagan formed a Presidential Task Force on drunken driving, Congress required states to raise the drinking age to 21 and the newly formed Mothers Against Drunk Driving began pushing for tougher anti-drinking legislation nationwide.

Tougher seat belt laws and improvements in vehicle safety also helped lower numbers. Deaths linked to alcohol use fell nearly every year in the 1980s and 1990s, reaching a low of 16,572 in 1999.

Highway safety advocates say Americans have become complacent about the dangers of drunken driving. Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, said more attention has been focused recently on the risk of cell phone use than on drunken driving.

"We have very little evidence that a significant number of people are dying from cell phones, yet we know that more than 17,000 people died from drunken driving," he said.

National MADD President Wendy Hamilton blames higher death rates in some states on a lack of political leadership. "Those states are not enforcing the right laws and are not passing the right laws," she said.

Adkins said states need more federal funding for highway patrols to stop drunken driving, especially in this era of budget shortfalls and increased police attention to homeland security duties.

Marilena Amoni, NHTSA's associate administrator, said drivers need to be held responsible when they choose to drink and drive.

"It's not just the role of the state and federal government, it's a personal choice to make the right decision every time you get in the car," she said.

The Associated Press,

Sun staff members Jace Radke and Jean Reid Norman contributed to this story.

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