In May the National Transportation Safety Board released 19 recommendations to end impaired driving. This post is the second in a series examining the NTSB’s five safety issue areas.
It would be difficult to find a driver who isn’t aware that driving while impaired is illegal. Yet each day some people choose to drink and get behind the wheel. Many factors play a role in the decision to drive after drinking, but can an increased sense that they may get caught encourage drivers to make a different choice?
Since the 1980s, law enforcement has increased its use of high-visibility enforcement (i.e., sobriety checkpoints and media campaigns) to dissuade people from driving while impaired. Research demonstrates that well-publicized sobriety checkpoints reduce the incidents of alcohol-related fatal and injury crashes, in part because they increase drivers’ real or perceived risk of being arrested for driving while intoxicated.
It is law enforcement’s duty to protect the public by enforcing drunk driving laws: detecting probable impaired drivers, pulling them over, testing their sobriety, and arresting those who are impaired. However, without the use of technology, breath tests, and passive alcohol sensors (noninvasive devices that can detect alcohol vapor in the ambient environment), alcohol-impaired drivers can conceal their impairment, even from law enforcement.
The NTSB suggests that more extensive execution of sobriety checkpoints and passive alcohol sensors (during routine traffic stops as well as sobriety checkpoints) will help eliminate alcohol-impaired driving. What do you think? Do individuals who often drink and drive stay home when sobriety checkpoints are in effect? Do they drive a different route or use a designated driver? Or, do they stay sober those days?
In my next blog, I’ll look at the NTSB’s recommendation to expand the use of in-vehicle devices to prevent operation by an impaired driver.
The scare factor definitely has helped in the amount of drinkers who often drive impaired. I think the more people hear of “Zero Tolerance” the more people will plan accordingly prior to intentionally going out for drinks. Arizona’s “impaired to the slightest degree” (.02 BAC) will land you a DUI just the same as .08, the legal limit. Not many, more like vary few, realize the consequences now. I feel it will be impossible to see any large reduction in DUI charges, but a Zero Tolerance maybe keep it from increasing yearly.