How to Prevent Drinking and Driving

By Nico Riley, eHow Contributor

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Every year there are many accidents and deaths that result from drinking and driving. Driving drunk poses a threat not only to the intoxicated people in the vehicle, but they also pose a threat to everyone else on the road and street. Many times the person to be hurt or killed from drinking and driving are innocent victims who happened to cross paths with a drunk driver. Here are some ways to prevent drinking and driving.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. 1
   Have a designated driver. If you and your friends are going to a party, bar, or anywhere else where there will be consumption of alcohol, designate a driver before you leave. The designated driver should have the car keys and should not consume any alcoholic beverages. Having a designated driver will ensure that people who are intoxicated will not be operating a vehicle and will also provide them with a safe ride home.
   
2. 2
   Don’t let your friends or anyone else in your presence drive drunk. If you notice a friend or another patron is drunk and about to get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, take the keys from them and call a cab to take them to their destination. Driving while drunk is extremely dangerous. This is true even if you only have to drive a short distance.
   
3. 3
   Spread the word about drinking and driving. There are organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) which teach of the dangers of drinking and driving. Check with your local authorities and community based organization to see how you can get involved in helping to keep people aware of the dangers of drunk driving. If you can’t personally volunteer your time to work with such organizations, support them by sending donations so they can continue in their work.
   
4. 4
   Contact your state and federal lawmakers about passing stricter drinking and driving laws. Also push for tougher punishments for those convicted of drunken driving offenses such as automatic revoking the licenses of those convicted of drunken driving along with mandatory jail time. Get your community and local law enforcement involved by stepping up sobriety checkpoints and saturation patrols. Some states do not currently have sobriety checkpoints so you can work towards bringing attention to those states in hopes of getting the laws changed.
   
5. 5
   Do not serve alcohol at parties where minors under the age of 21 are present. Even if an adult supervising the party doesn’t supply the alcohol, they are still liable if someone brings alcohol on their property. Monitor your children’s parties and make sure no alcohol is being served or passed around. Social host liability laws make it so the person who is in charge of the property is also responsible for any alcohol given to minors under the age of 21 on said property.
   

Introduction to Impaired Driver General Deterrence..According to NHTSA

Creating Impaired Driver General Deterrence
Eight Case Studies of Sustained,
High-Visibility, Impaired-Driving Enforcement 

INTRODUCTION

This document presents eight case studies of programmatic efforts that are intended to reduce the incidence of impaired driving. The purpose of the document is to provide examples of promising efforts that might encourage law enforcement managers and others to consider developing similar programs for their jurisdictions.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked Anacapa Sciences, Inc., to prepare descriptive summaries of programs that provide direction and strategies concerning the planning, financing, and conduct of sustained impaired driving enforcement activities. NHTSA specified that the candidate programs must, at a minimum, demonstrate the following characteristics.

• Weekly (preferred) or monthly (minimum) regularly scheduled special impaired driving enforcement activities conducted over a sustained period of time.
  
  
• Highly visible law enforcement presence through such practices as checkpoints and saturation patrols.
  
  
• Media component that supports the enforcement activities. The media component should consist of both earned and unearned publicity in a variety of formats.
  
  
• Strong command and political support.

NHTSA also expressed particular interest in impaired-driving enforcement programs that are multi-jurisdictional efforts and in programs that are self-sustaining. NHTSA issued a request for recommendations of programs that meet the specified criteria. Recommendations received by NHTSA were forwarded to the project director who then identified and contacted program personnel, conducted interviews, and obtained additional information through independent research and an iterative process of follow-up requests for information and data, and responses by program personnel. The resulting collection of summaries included 10 programs conducted by municipal police departments, 5 by state police or highway patrols, 4 by county sheriff’s offices, 3 by non-law enforcement government agencies, 3 by non-government agencies, 3 multi-agency task forces administered by municipal police departments, and one by a university police department. The 29 programs are listed in Appendix A.

NHTSA selected eight programs to be described in greater detail. Additional independent research, interviews, and site visits were conducted to obtain the information necessary to expand the summaries into the eight case studies presented here. A common format is used to describe the programs. Each case study begins with a statement of the program’s distinguishing features, followed by a description of the setting, or location, of the program; then, background information and a discussion of the planning process are provided. Next, the program is described in sections devoted to the special enforcement methods, frequency of operations and duration of the program, participation, public awareness/program visibility, and funding. Perhaps most useful, the case studies also include sections listing the lessons learned during the program, which are presented in terms of obstacles encountered (and solutions to the problems), program strengths, and specific suggestions from the program organizers. Each case study concludes with a brief discussion of evidence of program effects and the program liaison’s contact information. The locations of the eight programs described in this document are illustrated on the accompanying map and include one statewide, two municipal, and five county programs.

The programs are similar in important ways. In particular, they share the objective of reducing the incidence of traffic crashes in which alcohol is a factor and the strategy of conducting highly visible, sustained enforcement activities. In addition, all of the programs began with the organizers performing systematic analyses of the factors that contributed to crashes in their areas and by identifying appropriate countermeasures. The organizers of the programs all were eager to learn from the experiences of others, and equally eager to innovate and/or adapt promising strategies to local conditions. Examples of programmatic innovation range from the development of low staffing level sobriety checkpoints designed by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office for mountainous areas, to the media events conducted by the Cuyahoga County DUI Task Force to generate the free publicity necessary to elevate public awareness of their enforcement program¹. Perhaps the most important similarity is that all of the programs are guided by highly motivated and capable organizers who sincerely believe that their actions can contribute to saving lives and preventing pain and suffering.
Despite their similarities, each of the programs is unique in its combination of agency type, agency size, enforcement and publicity methods, and frequency of operations. The programs represent a broad spectrum of special enforcement activities conducted by a variety of agencies, including county sheriffs, municipal police departments, a state patrol, and multi-agency task forces. The enforcement, publicity, and administrative methods include all of the traditional approaches and several innovative strategies, such as the cross-cultural efforts of the Washington State Patrol, the comprehensive approach of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the procedures designed by the East Valley DUI Task Force to increase efficiency, the organizational structure created by the Austin Police Department, and the solutions to financial limitations developed in Fresno and Los Angeles County. In short, this collection of case studies provides a sample of promising, sustained, high-visibility, impaired driving enforcement programs that are currently conducted throughout the Nation.

Do Cops Get To Make Up New DWI Laws?

The Dallas Morning News Crime Blog ran a story recently about stepped up DWI enforcement for a holiday weekend:

The message: If you drink and drive during the Labor Day holiday, you will go to jail.
That's the word from local law enforcement and the Texas Department of Transportation which launched its anti-drunk driving campaign in the Dallas/Fort Worth area Friday morning…
"Drunk driving is a serious issue, and we intend to come down especially hard on drunk drivers during the two weeks leading up to Labor Day holiday," said North Richland Hills police Sgt. Neal Maranto. "If you are drinking and driving, you will be pulled over and you will be arrested.”

Two commenters immediately noticed the substitution of “drinking and driving” for “DWI”. (They are not the same thing.)

Posted by TexasYellowDog @ 4:33 PM Sat, Aug 22, 2009
"If you drink and drive during the Labor Day holiday, you will go to jail."
Why's that? Drinking and driving aren't illegal. Do the cops get to make up new laws because it's a holiday?

and

Posted by retry @ 10:21 PM Sat, Aug 22, 2009
...also- as YellowDog correctly points out, there is a HUGE difference between "Drinking and Driving" and "Driving While Intoxicated."
DWI is illegal. Drinking and driving is not. Confusing these two does not help anyone.

I don’t begrudge the police spokesperson trying to discourage DWI or drinking/driving, although the second is not always unlawful. But these two comments from public readers show why conflating the two is ineffective, possibly even counterproductive.
When you obviously lie to folks about part of your message, the truthful parts are more likely to be ignored. Then again, DWI lawyers might tell you that the police are inadvertently being truthful; that is, they do indeed arrest everyone who drives with an odor of alcohol on their breath, even though that is not against the law. It’s just a bad idea.

What is DWI?

I presume by Austin we are talking about the City of Austin, Texas, USA. I looked up DWI which means “driving while intoxicated”, which is an offense committed by an individual who operates a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. I wonder if Austin has a higher incidence of DWI?
No wonder websites and blogs have started talking about Austin Texas DWI laywers and attorneys.