Drunk driving is down 30% in the last 5 years according to the latest CDC report.
Drunken driving incidents have fallen 30 percent in the last five years, and last year were at their lowest mark in nearly two decades, according to a new federal report. The decline may be due to the down economy: Other research suggests people are still drinking as heavily as in years past, so some may just be finding cheaper ways of imbibing than by going to bars, night clubs and restaurants."One possibility is that people are drinking at home more and driving less after drinking," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_DRUNK_DRIVING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-10-04-13-26-45
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Report 10/4/11:In 2010, 1.8% of respondents reported at least one episode of alcohol-impaired driving in the past 30 days. These four million adults reported an estimated 112,116,000 episodes of alcohol-impaired driving in the United States for the year. This is the lowest percentage of drinking drivers and lowest number of episodes reported since 1993, the first year for which published national BRFSS estimates are available. Since the peak in 2006, alcohol-impaired driving episodes have declined 30%, from 161 million to 112 million (Figure 1). Sixty percent of those who reported driving while impaired indicated one episode in the past 30 days; however, some respondents reported that they drove while impaired daily. Men accounted for 81% of 2010 alcohol-impaired driving episodes. Young men aged 21--34 years, who represented 11% of the U.S. adult population, reported 32% of all 2010 episodes.http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm60e1004a1.htm?s_cid=mm60e1004a1_w