States Where Drunk Driving Deaths Are Soaring
The national rate of drunk driving deaths has slowed, according to new research. Yet in several states, the number has soared.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its annual report on driving deaths in America. What it calls “alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities” dropped 3.6% from 2017 to 2018. However, in several states, the number has soared.
For each state, the NHTSA reports total driving fatalities and alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities side by side so they can be compared. In some states, alcohol is blamed for over 40% of deaths. The report also shows the change in alcohol-related deaths from 2017 to 2018. The number surged by over 25% in several states. These included:
- Alaska, up 31.8% to 29 in 2018
- Minnesota, up 25.0% to 105
- Montana, up 38.6% to 79
- New Hampshire, up 77.8% to 48
- South Dakota, up 25.0% to 45
- Nationwide, down 3.6% to 10,511
Last year, 24/7 Wall St. looked at the problem and came to the conclusion that: “Several factors affect the number and rate of drunk driving deaths in a state. One main factor is the state’s population, such as the culture and median age — younger people tend to be at higher risk of drunk driving deaths because they drink more. Another factor is annual vehicle miles traveled, meaning that rural states tend to have higher rates of drunk driving deaths. Other factors include state laws, initiatives such as alcohol ignition interlock programs, and the level of law enforcement — all of which can be a deterrence to drunk driving.”
The analysis also found that high levels of drunk driving deaths occurred in sparsely populated and cold-weather states.
Drunk driving laws and stricter punishments have been credited with much of the reduction in drunk driving deaths over the past two decades. However, the rate of decline has slowed. Experts now face the challenge of whether there are other methods to push the rate down again. In several states, the drunk driving death rate has still risen sharply, which is an example of how the problem continues to persist.
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
