The thing I am looking for online and not finding are drunk driving statistics for the United States, broken down by state and in per capita form. Even better would be per capita for only the number of licensed drivers and even better than that would be statistics broken down by average number of road hours (amount of time drivers spend on the road). I am finding none of these things. Surely this information exists somewhere on the internet. My Google-Fu must be failing today.
The reason I want these statistics is the talking heads on local news have been going on today about the five-year mission of MADD and the State of Texas to bring down our high rate of drunk driving fatalities. The annual number has only come down by a few hundred, and “Texas tops the nation in DWI fatalities.” We do have a large number of drunk driving fatalities. We also have a large state with a large population. Unless the statistics are in per capita form, it’s hardly fair to compare our DWI fatalities with those of Wyoming, which has a much smaller population and thus fewer drivers.
The closest I have come to finding the information I am looking for is a news story from December 2007 using the statistics from a government report to figure out the per capita rates of DWI fatalities. There’s a link in the story that says it goes to a list of all the states and their per capita statistics, but the link goes to another news story with no additional information. I guess if I want those statistics, I’ll have to compile them myself from the same report.
Anyway, the top five states for per capita DWI fatalities in that story were Wyoming, Mississippi, Montana, South Carolina, and South Dakota. South Dakota’s per capita rate was 8.82 DWI fatalities (per 100,000 residents). By my math, Texas’ per capita rate for the same period is 7.13. So no doubt, we are probably in the top ten, but to go on and on about how Texas leads the nation in DWI deaths just because we have more of them is ignorant. Of course we have more of them. We have more people, and thus we have more of everything.
It’s not possible to compare states like Wyoming and Texas on any sort of statistic unless it is broken down into per capita form. Wyoming is the least populous state in the USA, and Texas is one of the most populous. It may seem wrong to state that Wyoming is at the top of the list for DWI fatalities, seeing as they only had 475 the year we had 1677. Someone who isn’t paying attention to how to use statistics … or who has an agenda of some sort … would certainly state that Texas is far worse with drunk driving than Wyoming, but that isn’t true. 13.01 alcohol related fatalities per 100,000 in Wyoming. 7.13 alcohol related fatalities per 100,000 in Texas. Statistically speaking, a person’s chances of being one of those fatalities, being involved in a DWI accident, or knowing someone who was involved or killed in such an incident is much, much higher in Wyoming than in Texas.
Yet MADD continues to crawl all over Texas having fits about how many people die annually in alcohol related auto accidents, attempting to institute measures to bring that number down that I find to be distasteful (not a fan of unnecessary roadblocks trolling for drunk drivers, for example), and generally having the ear and mouth of the local news spreading their useless statistics. Yes, drunk driving is bad. Yes, people need to not do it. Yes, a lot of people die in Texas because of it. But … could we just every once in a while not label Texas as the worst about something when it’s not even true? Just once?
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest after hearing yet again how Texas is the worst state for drunk driving deaths. It annoys me when news stations give in to spreading messages. I just want the news. I do not need to hear what MADD or anyone else has to say about it. Quite frankly, I’m pleased that drunk driving deaths in Texas are consistently dropping. That’s good news! How about we act like it’s good news for a change? And while we are at it, why don’t we also point out, using proper statistics, that Texas doesn’t really lead the nation on this subject. High on the list? Sure. Too high? Most definitely. But I know at least five states that are significantly worse. Let’s cut Texas some slack. It’s improving. Let’s be happy about that.