Traffic Stops Reduce Drunk Driving

Drunk driving causes 10,000 car accident fatalities every year.
Senior research scientist, at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, John Fell, who focuses his studies on driving under the influence and teenage drunk driving, conducted a study to determine which laws are most effective in decreasing instances of drunk driving. The data showed that programs to curb drunk driving, implemented by communities, can significantly reduce the number of residents who will attempt to drive while under the influence.

Fell collected data from 30 communities, evaluating six common traffic violations including reckless driving, seatbelt tickets and the frequency of police stopping suspected drunk drivers. He found communities with a high number of traffic stops had lower numbers of impaired drivers. Conversely, communities with lower amounts of traffic stops had two to three times the number of drunk drivers. Data results also showed that neighborhoods who had high numbers of arrests for drunk driving had lower numbers of drunk drivers on the road.

From 1982 to 1997, Fell worked with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to bring the dangers of drunk driving to the forefront of public awareness. It wasn’t until the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) put faces to drunk driving car accident fatalities and successfully convinced politicians to crack down on drunk driving and enact tougher drunk driving laws, that the public took the inherent dangers of drunk driving seriously. New legislation and the efforts of organizations like MADD successfully reduced nationwide drunk driving by 43%.

Fell is now focusing his efforts to toughen standards for what constitutes exceeding the legal limit of alcohol consumption and considering an individual intoxicated. In the U.S. an individual who has a Blood Alcohol Level (BAC) of .08 % or about four drinks per hour for someone who weighs 170 pounds, is considered intoxicated. European countries and Australia have a BAC of 0.05 % which is equal to consuming approximately 2.5 drinks in an hour. It has been recommended that the U.S. implement the same standards as these countries but to date, no states have made changes to their legislation.