Notes

Impaired driving is an enormous problem in Texas and the rest of the United States.
Around one-third of all traffic fatalities are caused by impaired driving alone, making it roughly tied with speeding as the leading factor involved in traffic fatalities. In Texas in 2013, 43% of all fatally injured drivers measured a 0.08% BAC or higher.
According to the Texas Department of Transportation's 2013 data, a person is over ten times more likely to be killed when involved in a DUI-related crash than when involved in a non-DUI-related crash.

In 2013, there were 10,076 fatalities in alcohol-impaired* traffic collisions. These accounted for 31% of all traffic fatalities nationwide.
The same year, Texas suffered 1,337 alcohol-impaired traffic fatalities—40% of its total. That's 470 more fatalities than the next-highest state, California, which has a larger population than Texas.
In the ten years from 2004 to 2013, the United States saw over 116,000 people die in alcohol-impaired traffic collisions.
* "Alcohol-impaired" means that at least one driver registered a BAC of 0.08% or more.

Driving under the influence of alcohol and other drugs is extremely dangerous. Judgment, vision, hearing, attention, and memory are all greatly impaired.
Alcohol and other drugs also damage your physical coordination. You may have trouble standing upright, let alone making fine movements to steer a 3,000-lb vehicle.
Next, we'll explain in detail the laws governing impaired driving, the consequences of impaired driving collisions, and how to stay safe from impaired drivers on the road.

Drunk driving continues to be a huge problem in the United States and in Texas. State laws exist to punish you for making the mistake of getting behind the wheel while impaired.
The first laws against drunk driving were adopted in New York in 1910, but for the next 44 years, police officers had to rely on visual signs to determine intoxication. Only with the invention of the breathalyzer, in 1954, did police officers have a portable and non-invasive way to accurately and numerically measure blood alcohol content (BAC).
Since then, chemical tests measuring the percent of alcohol in a person's bloodstream have been an important aspect of drunk driving law enforcement.

However, even with the advent of the breathalyzer, weak laws and a lack of research led many governmental and regulatory agencies to accept long-standing BAC limits as high as 0.15%.
These limits proved ineffective due to the extent of impairment possible below this level of intoxication. Drunk driving continued to account for the majority of traffic fatalities—in 1982, 60% of all traffic fatalities were alcohol-related.

By the end of the 1970s, American citizens frustrated with the prevalence of drunk driving began organizing into action groups.
The first of these grassroots organizations, formed in New York in 1978, called itself Remove Intoxicated Drivers (RID). Their mission was to reduce drunk driving and underage drinking, to advocate for victims of drunk driving, and to promote the enactment and enforcement of effective DWI/DUI laws.

Two years later, in 1980, the nation saw the birth of perhaps the most prolific and well-known grassroots action groups against drunk driving: Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD).
Its first mission statement was "To aid the victims of crimes performed by individuals driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, to aid the families of such victims and to increase public awareness of the problem of drinking and drugged driving."
Since then, its mission has expanded to include stopping drunk driving altogether, as well as preventing underage drinking.


Two years later, another sweeping legislative event took place: with the passing of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, all states were compelled to raise their minimum age for purchase and public possession of alcohol to 21 years.
The minimum drinking age of 21 years was in fact recommended less than a year earlier by the 1982 Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving, which was in turn partly influenced by MADD.

Although the federal government did not technically have the authority to force states to adopt a minimum drinking age of 21 years, it was able to compel them by mandating a 10% decrease in annual federal highway funding for states not adopting the standard.
The constitutionality of this legislative maneuver was challenged by the government of South Dakota, but upheld. Within four years, all 50 states had adopted a minimum drinking age of 21 years.

In 2000, Congress passed the Department of Transportation (DOT) Appropriations Act. Far-reaching and impactful in a similar manner to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, this piece of legislation aimed to standardize the maximum legal limit for alcohol intoxication while driving at 0.08% BAC.
The DOT Appropriations Act mandated the temporary withholding of a small percentage of federal funding for highway construction for all states that failed to adopt this new standard. Any state not in compliance by October 2007 would have lost these withheld funds permanently. Within five years, all 50 states had adopted a 0.08% BAC as the legal limit for drivers. Since then, the number of drunk driving fatalities has decreased by about 20%, both in Texas and the United States as a whole.

You may be confused by the fact that the criminal offense of drunk driving is referred to both as Driving Under the Influence (DUI) and Driving While Intoxicated (DWI).
Originally, all drunk drivers were charged with the crime of DUI. However, these laws tended to be more difficult to enforce, as they often required officers to prove that the driver had been significantly impaired, allowing some drivers to avoid conviction. Under current DWI laws, a person can be convicted simply by presenting the results of a chemical test showing that the person was driving with an illegal BAC or any positive amount of certain controlled substances.

This important provision, now enacted in some form in all 50 states, establishes a 0.08% BAC as the per se limit for driving.
"Per se" is Latin for "by itself." It is used in this case to mean that, regardless of any visible impairment or influence of alcohol and other drugs, a 0.08% BAC is, by itself, enough to constitute the offense of DWI. In fact, the arresting officer does not need to witness any driving at all.
As a result of these laws, drunk drivers are significantly more likely to be convicted for their crimes.

According to the Texas Penal Code, a driver is considered legally intoxicated if he or she meets one of the following conditions:

He or she does not have the normal use of mental or physical faculties because of the introduction of a controlled substance, a drug, a combination of two or more of those substances, or any other substance into the body.
He or she has a BAC of 0.08% or higher.
These standards apply both to DWI and public intoxication offenses.

In other words, you can be charged with DWI if you have any drug in your system and are functioning at anything other than normal capacity. In this case, "any drug" includes legal and illegal drugs, prescription and over the counter drugs, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, etc.
However, because of the "per se" limit, the results of a chemical test are also sufficient for demonstrating a driver's intoxication. This limit was determined based on the fact that all drivers are particularly likely to be impaired at this level.

One important consequence of the per se limit is that it allows wider use of sobriety checkpoints. Sobriety checkpoints are publicized roadblocks dedicated to finding drunk drivers and taking them off the road. Police officers assess the condition of drivers and perform breath tests to determine intoxication.
As long as a law enforcement agency operates a sobriety checkpoint according to certain rules, it has the support of the Supreme Court to randomly check drivers for impairment. These rules include that decisions must generally be made by a supervisor rather than by individual police officers, and that the selection of drivers for testing must be random.

Currently, according to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code, the offense of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) is reserved for impaired drivers under the age of 21.
Because it is illegal for minors to drive with any amount of alcohol in their system, the presence of any detectable amount of alcohol in a young driver's body is enough to prove that he or she was "influenced" by alcohol. An officer's testimony that he or she could smell alcohol on the driver's breath is enough to obtain a DUI conviction.

As we discussed in the previous unit, Texas has progressive DUI and DWI laws that impose more significant charges on repeat offenders and on those who show an excessive degree of intoxication.
In Texas, a driver with a BAC of 0.15% or higher can be charged as a high-BAC offender. In more serious cases, a minor can be charged with DWI, which involves more significant penalties.

Remember, additional penalties apply when an intoxicated driver is traveling with a passenger under 15, and when the driver injures or kills a person while driving drunk. The offenses of Intoxication Assault and Intoxication Manslaughter are serious crimes and involve significant penalties.
The different penalties for DUI and DWI offenses in Texas are illustrated on the following slides.

DUI, 1st offense—Drivers under 21: Class C Misdemeanor
Punishable with a fine of up to $500, 20 to 40 hours of community service, a 60-day license suspension, and 30 days of ineligibility for an occupational license
DUI, 2nd offense—Drivers under 21: Class C Misdemeanor
Punishable with a fine of up to $500, 40 to 60 hours of community service, a 120-day license suspension, and 90 days of ineligibility for an occupational license

DUI, 3rd offense—Drivers age 16 and under: Class C Misdemeanor
Punishable with a fine of up to $500, 40 to 60 hours of community service, and license suspension of 180 days or more, plus potential referral to Juvenile Court
DUI, 3rd offense—Drivers age 17 to 20: Class B Misdemeanor
Punishable with a fine of up to $2,000, 40 to 60 hours of community service, a 180-day license suspension, and no eligibility for an occupational license
A driver's fourth and all subsequent DUI offenses will be punished at this level.

DWI, 1st offense: Class B Misdemeanor
Punishable with a fine of up to $2,000, a jail sentence between 72 hours and 180 days, and a 90- to 365-day license suspension
DWI, 2nd offense: Class A Misdemeanor
Punishable with a fine of up to $4,000, a jail sentence between 30 days and 1 year, and a 180-day to 2-year license suspension
DWI, 3rd offense: 3rd Degree Felony
Punishable with a fine of up to $10,000, a jail sentence between 2 and 10 years, and a 180-day to 2-year license suspension
A driver's fourth and all subsequent DUI offenses will be punished at this level.

DWI—With child passenger under age 15: State Jail Felony
Punishable with a fine of up to $10,000, a jail sentence between 180 days and 2 years, and possible license suspension
Intoxication Assault: 3rd Degree Felony
Punishable with a fine of up to $10,000, a jail sentence between 2 and 10 years, and a 90-day to one-year license suspension
Intoxication Manslaughter: 2nd Degree Felony
Punishable with a fine of up to $10,000, a jail sentence between 2 and 20 years, and a 180-day to 2-year license suspension

Keep in mind that special licenses are available to drivers who receive a license suspension for a DWI offense that allows them to continue to drive as long as they install an ignition interlock device (IID) in their car. The IID must remain installed for the entire duration of the suspension period.
An IID will keep the engine from running if it detects that the driver has a BAC over a certain limit.

Public intoxication is also a crime. If a person meets the legal standard of intoxication and is found to be behaving in a way that endangers himself or herself or other people in a public place, he or she may be found guilty of public intoxication and fined up to $500.
Minors who are publically intoxicated will be charged as a Minor in Possession (MIP). A minor with prior MIP convictions may be punished with a fine of up to $2,000, up to 40 hours of community service, and/or a jail sentence of up to 6 months.

Years of alcohol-related casualties on the road have led governments to adopt more rigid policies for the safety of their citizens—for example in 1984, when the legal drinking age in the United States was raised to 21.
In 2000, when the federal government began strongly encouraging all states to reduce the per se BAC limit while driving from 0.10% to 0.08%, there were almost 13,500 alcohol-impaired fatalities on the road. In 2013, that number had been reduced to about 10,000.

The drunk driving reforms you're now familiar with are not just hopeful or theoretical advances. Especially in combination with changing public opinion and awareness of drunk driving, these reforms have had significant, measurable impacts on the prevalence of drunk driving in the United States and Texas.
In the United States in 1982, the year the Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving was established, 21,113 Americans died in alcohol-impaired traffic collisions. By 2013, alcohol-related traffic fatalities had decreased by 52%.

Despite a growing population and growing numbers of licensed drivers, the number of people who died in alcohol-impaired traffic collisions in 2013 was 11,037 fewer than died in 1982.
These 10,076 alcohol-related traffic fatalities in 2013 accounted for 31% of all traffic fatalities, which shows that drunk driving remains a huge public health problem. However, this still represents a severe reduction in the prevalence of drunk driving: in 1982, alcohol-impaired traffic fatalities represented almost 50% of all people killed in collisions—a rate that is more than 50% higher than the current numbers.

A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that sobriety checkpoints in particular are an effective way to reduce the impact and prevalence of drunk driving. On average, areas in which sobriety checkpoints are implemented see about 9% fewer alcohol-related traffic collisions.
The CDC also found that the results were similar for both short-term and long-term roadblock campaigns. This suggests that the effectiveness of roadblocks does not diminish over time.

Overall, the 0.08% BAC limit, the minimum legal drinking age of 21 years, and numerous other important drunk driving reforms have made our roads much safer.
However, even a single alcohol-related traffic fatality is too many. Research and policy continue to develop in response to an increasingly deeper understanding of the problem of drunk driving. Please help your community and your nation by understanding both the human risks and the legal consequences of impaired driving.

The NHTSA estimates that drivers with a BAC of 0.05% are about five times more likely to be involved in a fatal collision than drivers with no alcohol in their bloodstream. Drivers with a BAC of 0.08% are estimated to be about nine times more likely to be involved in a fatal collision, and for drivers with a BAC of 0.15%, the estimate is 20 times the risk of sober drivers.
In 2013, excluding the perpetrators themselves, drunk drivers killed 3,561 people. This includes:

1,567 of their own passengers
1,157 occupants of other vehicles
837 pedestrians, bicyclists, and others not occupying a motor vehicle

Driving while intoxicated is a national problem, but its impact is felt with extra strength in Texas.
According to the NHTSA, in 2013, more people died in collisions involving a driver with a BAC of 0.01% or higher in Texas than in any other state.
In Texas, 1,550 people were killed in a collision involving a driver with some degree of intoxication. In comparison, in California, the state with the next highest number of fatalities, only 1,025 people were killed. This means that over 50% more people were killed in drunk driving crashes in Texas than were in California, despite the fact that the state has only 2/3 the population that California does.

Of the 1,550 people killed in a drunk driving collision in Texas in 2013, 970 (63%) were the impaired drivers themselves. This means that in Texas, almost 600 other people (e.g. passengers, pedestrians, other drivers, etc.) were killed by drunk drivers in 2013. All of these deaths were preventable. In every case, if the drunk driver had simply chosen not to get into the driver's seat, there would have been no collision and no deaths.
And deaths aren't the only serious result of drunk driving collisions: the NHTSA estimates that over 250,000 people are injured in alcohol-related traffic collisions each year.

While drug tests are performed on less than half of all drivers involved in fatal crashes, these tests indicate the presence of drugs in about a third of those tested—around 6,000 people—every year. The true figure, however, is probably significantly higher. Consider the following:

Only a blood sample will show the presence of many drugs.
Although the per se limit for certain controlled substances, such as marijuana, is a minimum positive amount, there is no per se limit for some impairing substances, such as caffeine or nicotine.
Testing for every possible impairing substance is impossible, given the vast number of such drugs.
According to the NHTSA, about two-thirds of drug-impaired-crash fatalities are the impaired drivers themselves. The drivers who died were three times as likely to test positive for drugs as the drivers who survived.