NCJ Number
138070
Date Published
1990
Length
43 pages
Annotation
This chapter describes the evolution of the current drunk driving enforcement system in the United States and the principal factors that have shaped the adjudication and sanctioning of drunk drivers.
Abstract
Although the United States has the lowest traffic death rate per vehicle mile in the world, it has the largest number of highway deaths. The proportion of those deaths that are alcohol-related is probably as high as in any industrialized nation. This may be due more to the relative availability and low cost of alcohol, along with the relative unavailability and high cost of public transportation, than to the status of drunk driving enforcement programs. The U.S. public and government must address the alcohol availability issue if highway deaths and injuries due to alcohol are to be significantly reduced. Still, during the early 1980's the United States succeeded in reducing the proportion of alcohol-related fatalities by approximately 15 percent. This reduction has been maintained in the face of a rising non-alcohol-related highway death rate. Breathtesting is a consistent feature in all enforcement programs; however, both enforcement and judicial programs continue to operate primarily on the basis of the traditional behavioral model of enforcement, in which the appearance and conduct of the driver is the central consideration at trial. It remains to be seen whether this process can be streamlined by the adoption of procedures, such as the random breath test program in Australia or the widespread use of tests permitted under the 1967 Road Safety Act in Britain. Much may depend on the extent to which citizen activist groups can continue to engage the public's attention and pressure legislators to pass new laws that increase the efficiency of both police departments and the courts. 4 figures and 87 references