Higher Age Limit Tied to Dip in Drunk-Driving Arrests

A raised drinking age in most states has helped slash the number of drunk-driving arrests among 18- to 20-year-olds by almost a quarter since 1983, a steeper drop than for any other age group, the Justice Department said Sunday.

That was one of the major findings in a new study by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics that seeks to track trends in drunk driving and draws perhaps the most comprehensive character sketch to date of the average offender.

The statistics indicate, for instance, that half of the people jailed on DWI charges had drunk the alcoholic equivalent of at least 12 bottles of beer or eight mixed drinks before their arrests. More than a quarter of the group drank what amounted to at least 20 beers or 13 mixed drinks before getting behind the wheel.

Profiles Drunk Driver

“We begin to see something about the typical drunk driver,” departmental statistician Lawrence A. Greenfield said of the study. “We see the guy in jail who, by and large, drinks very heavily when he drinks, who has a history of DWI arrests and a history of alcohol treatment . . . who doesn’t have a very stable family life and is frequently unemployed.”

Greenfield based the portrait on newly released data drawn from a 1983 nationwide survey of individuals held in local jails for driving while intoxicated, an offense estimated to have killed as many as 250,000 people in car crashes over the last decade.

Almost half the group--or 48.3% --were repeat offenders, having been sentenced at least once previously for driving while intoxicated and a similar proportion had been in alcohol abuse treatment programs.

Norma Phillips, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said in a telephone interview that the study “substantiates exactly what we’ve been saying for years” about the dangers of repeat offenders and alcohol abusers on the roads, and it points up the need for stiffer penalties and better education.

The Justice Department also noted that of those charged or convicted for DWI: 95% were men; 32.7% were unemployed; 77.8% were single, divorced, separated or widowed; the median annual income was $8,750, the median age 32 years and the median schooling 12 years.

Notes Racial Breakdown

The study said that the racial breakdown of those held on DWI charges paralleled the general population, although it noted that 17% classified themselves as Latino, compared to 8% in the general population.

The median sentence was 90 days for first-time offenders, 180 days for repeat violators.

The Justice Department study also found that overall arrests for driving under the influence of intoxicants such as drugs or alcohol rose 223% from 1970 to 1986. For 1983, an estimated 1.9 million people were charged, or one in every 80 drivers.

With generally tougher regulations and enforcement in recent years, coupled with a raised public consciousness on the drunk-driving problem, that figure had dropped to about 1.8 million by 1986. After a sharp reduction in 1984, however, the decline seems to have flattened somewhat for the last two years for which records are available.

Group’s Arrests Drop

Cutting their rate of arrests faster than any other age group were those 18 to 20 years old, traditionally high-risk offenders. Their number of arrests dropped 24% from 1983 to 1986, amounting to a rate of decline more than twice that of 21- to 24-year-olds.

Since 1983, under pressure of a cutoff in federal highway funds, 26 states raised their alcohol-purchase age, giving all but seven states a 21-year-old limit.

Greenfield said that the higher drinking age can be statistically tied to as much as half of the steep decline in the rate for 18- to 20-year-olds.