Drunk driving is a very serious issue in the United States of America with nearly 30% of all car accidents occurring due to impaired, or drunk, driving (“Motor Vehicle Safety”). In 2015 alone, more than 10,000 people died in the United States of America because of impaired driving. The journal article, The Law and Criminology of Drunk Driving, states, “Drunk driving is estimated to cause between 30 and 50 percent of all traffic fatalities and a smaller but still substantial fraction of other crashes” (Jacobs 172). The statistics of drunk driving made people realize the severity of the issue. In 1984, the legislators of the time believed that raising the drinking age from 18 to 21 would lower the number of drunk drivers on the road. Raising the drinking age in the United States did work, but only slightly. People under the age of 21 were and still are capable of getting alcohol fairly easily through illegal means such as asking someone of age to buy for them or by purchasing a fake ID. This means that raising the drinking age was not necessarily affective in stopping drunk driving, it only slightly deterred those under the age of 21. Rather than raising the drinking age, the best course of action these days to prevent drunk driving would be, raised taxes on alcohol, harsher punishments for driving drunk, and required alcohol education courses before being allowed to purchase or consume alcohol along with various other methods.

Before the year 1919, the United States did not have a minimum drinking age. During the era of Prohibition, the 18th Amendment was enacted which made having alcohol illegal. This Amendment was appealed in 1933 and the states began to have regulated drinking ages. The minimum drinking age in the United States was between 18 and 21 depending on the state. Most states decided to set their drinking age at 21. In the 70s, the national voting age was lowered to 18 and many states saw it fit that the drinking age should be lowered as well. An online article titled How the Legal Drinking Age has Changed Over Time explains, however, “The decrease in the minimum legal drinking age was shown by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to have drastically increased the number of alcohol-related car accidents. In fact, by the mid 1970s, 60 percent of traffic accident fatalities involved alcohol” (Devenyns). This statistic is what began the push for a raised minimum drinking age in America. Some states raised their drinking ages, but some had separate laws where you could buy beer at 18 and liquor at 21. This itself had issues, with states having open borders. People under the age of 21 could easily travel into any state with a lower drinking age to buy beer. Because of this, a group called M.A.D.D. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) lobbied Congress into passing an act which would have one national drinking age. By the year 1984, President Ronald Reagan officially signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act which “requires that States prohibit persons under 21 years of age from purchasing or publicly possessing alcoholic beverages as a condition of receiving State highway funds” (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism). If any state chose to disobey this act, the massive cuts in their federal funding would be detrimental (Fulton). M.A.D.D. believes that raising the drinking age has affected the rate of drunk drivers greatly claiming, “...the 21-minimum drinking age law has saved about 900 lives per year as estimated by the National Traffic Highway Administration (NHTSA). In short, there are more than 25,000 people alive today because of the 21-minimum drinking age law in every state” (Fulton). This statistic proves that lowering the drinking age did help to lower the rate of drunk drivers on the road, but 900 lives a year is a very small number which could be greatly increased through other means. 

One alternative that could have been used to lower the frequency of drunk driving is raising taxes on alcohol. This has a lot of benefits, but the largest is that instead of just affecting those ages 18 to 20, it affects people of all ages. Raising the drinking age is virtually ineffective because people who are 21 or older are just as likely to drink and drive as those under the age because there is nothing stopping them or even slowing them down. Studies have been done to back up the claim that increased taxes would reduce drunk driving, including one done at the University of Florida in Gainesville examining the 2009 tax increases on alcohol in Illinois. In this study, “researchers [found that] the results indicated that alcohol-related traffic deaths fell 26 percent overall, with a decrease even higher among young people, at 37 percent. Fatal crashes involving alcohol-impaired and extremely drunk drivers fell 22 percent and 25 percent, respectively” (Leonard). This means that when the taxes were raised, the amount of alcohol related car crashes fell significantly. A tax on alcohol would also make people purchase alcohol less in general because when something is more expensive, less people will want to do it. If the cost of drinking alcohol was more expensive, people would either drink alcohol less often or drink more moderately when they do. Also, people who are younger would be less likely to drink because they tend to have less money so buying alcohol would be much harder for them. Another reason taxes on alcohol would be beneficial are that they would generate more tax revenue. The staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that a tax of $16 per proof gallon would increase revenues by $64 billion over the 2014-2023 period (“Increase All Taxes on Alcoholic Beverages to $16 per Proof Gallon”). This means that if people chose to drink, they would at least be giving back to America. 

 Another big deterrent of drunk driving would be to have harsher punishments for driving drunk. There are many ways to achieve this. The first is to have larger fines for people caught driving drunk. No one wants to pay money for something that they could easily avoid, so larger fines would make people much more cautious about drinking and driving. Larger fines would also help to pay for the damage drunk drivers cause or could potentially cause in the future. Another great punishment to lower the number of people drunk driving would be to have minimum prison sentences for driving drunk. If someone knows they would go to jail for a definite amount of time, they would be much less likely to drink and drive at all, even if they were not drunk. Today, people can get multiple DUIs with very little repercussions. This claim is backed up by the law firm Xavier & Associates, stating, “A recent report by the Department of Motor Vehicles states that 4.7% of all first time DUI offenders are arrested a second time for DUI within one year of the initial offense. In 2004, of the total 139,331 DUI convictions, 32,880 of them were repeat offenders” (“Drunk Driving Legislation”). This means that because people did not go to prison, they were more likely to get a second DUI, which means that they are more likely to be a repeat offender. When someone is able to commit a crime and get away with it, they are much more likely to do it again. Therefore, if there was a guaranteed 10 year or so prison sentence for drunk driving, people are much less likely to do it. A study was done in Minneapolis to see if mandatory jail laws would be effective in deterring drunk driving which explains, “The evaluations found that nighttime fatal crashes-a generally accepted indicator of drunk driving-declined significantly near the time of the implementation of the jailing policy” (Ross). This shows that when people knew that they could get in more trouble, they were much less likely to make reckless decisions. Currently there is a bill with legislators are trying to get passed which states that, that “the third time a driver is charged with drunk driving would be charged with a felony.  Those who are charged for the first time would receive a criminal offense, rather than a civil.  Many repeat offenders would face anywhere from three to four years in prison for impaired driving charges” (Pickard). If this bill is passed, the opportunity cost of driving drunk and spending time in prison is much higher than finding alternative ways to get a ride home. Another good idea would be to lower the minimum BAC (blood alcohol content) required to get a DUI. Research to defend this idea has been done stating that “since 2013, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has called on states to reduce the legal BAC for drivers from 0.08 to 0.05. The agency notes that research shows the risk of a fatal crash more than doubles by the time someone reaches the current drunk-driving limit” (Betts). This means that when someone reaches the current limit, they are already passed the point of being too drunk to drive. By lowering the minimum BAC required to get a DUI and making the punishments harsher, it is much more likely that people would do whatever they can to avoid drinking and driving. This is because the best way to get people to stop drinking and driving is make punishments so bad for doing it that it is never worth it. The notion of rational choice theory “suggests that offenders respond selectively to particular situations based on the probability of being apprehended, the benefit they will reap from the crime, and the opportunity cost of selecting one option over another” (Lytton). 

Alcohol education courses would be another very beneficial act in stopping drunk driving. Today, people usually only have to take alcohol education courses after they have already gotten a DUI, or alcohol related offence, which is not effective at all in stopping the crime because they have already done the crime before. Educating people on how dangerous it is for them and anyone around them to drink and drive will make them less likely to do it. Also making sure they know how severe the punishment for drunk driving would be will make them not want to risk it. The other purpose would be to educate people on safe alternative ways to get home. This means how to make a good plan, find a designated driver, or how to call them self an Uber. The best way to make this affective would be to require people to take an alcohol education course in order to get an alcohol permit before ever being allowed to purchase alcohol. The course would teach people the dangers of alcohol and potentially make them want to drink less.

In addition to the government requiring alcohol education courses, they could help promote services like Uber and Lyft to lower the number of drunk drivers on the road. Uber, the ride sharing app, claims,“It’s estimated that two-thirds of Americans will be impacted by drunk driving during their lifetimes. And unsurprisingly, many fatal crashes occur on nights and weekends when people are out celebrating. Drunk driving affects everyone who shares the road—but it doesn’t have to” (Uber). If people were to just take Ubers or cabs, the fatalities from drunk driving would drop as a whole. These services are like taxies, except they are cheaper, and they get to people faster than taxies making them much more practical in the United States. An independent study “found that in four boroughs of New York City, excluding Staten Island, there has been a 25 to 35 percent reduction in alcohol-related car accidents since Uber came to town in 2011, as compared to other places where ride-hailing company doesn’t operate” (Fortin). This proves the effectiveness of Uber. The government could also subsidize these businesses to make them significantly cheaper for everyone to use. The more cost effective these services become the more likely people will be to use them and the more people will be able to use them in today’s economy. Public transportation in general is a great alternative to get drunk drivers off the roads, however busses and trains are far less practical in non-urban settings. Public transportation is important because no matter what is changed, some people just aren’t going to stop drinking, particularly those with substance abuse issues, so they need to have alternative ways to get home. 

Another huge way to deter drunk driving that many people don’t think about is the way drunk driving is portrayed in online and in the media. It is known that people tend to try and do things what see on television, in the movies, and in the media in person. Studies have been done to prove that mass media campaigns could severely deter drunk driving. One example of this is, “The AdCouncil reported, since the launch of refocused drunk driving campaigns, the number of people who have died in a highway crash involving a driver or a motorcycle operator with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher has decreased steadily each year, from about 13,500 in 2005 to just under 11,000 in 2009.” This shows that the more people saw about the dangers of drunk driving in the media, the less they would decide to drink and drive. 

Those who believed that raising the drinking age was a great way to lower the number of drunk drivers on the road were only partially correct. Raising the minimum drinking age only made it slightly harder for people under the age 21 to drink and drive, it did not, however, affect the number of drunk drivers over the age of 21. Those over the age of 21 are just as likely to drink and drive as they were before the drinking age was raised because the repercussions holding them back from it are not as strict. Things like taxes and educational courses affect people of all ages. M.A.D.D. claims that “there are more than 25,000 people alive today because of the 21-minimum law” (Fulton).  This sounds like a lot but 10,000 people died this year from drunk driving, and with the 25% drop (University of Florida experiment) that would likely result from raising taxes on alcohol, we could have saved 100,000 lives by now. It is easy to see other options would have been much more effective at reducing the number of drunk drivers on the road.

It is clear that something needs to be done to reduce drunk driving in the United States, losing 10,000 lives a year to drunk driving proves the current measures aren’t enough. Although the drinking age has been raised and there are some things already in place to stop people from drunk driving. These things alone are not enough because they have had very little results in lowering the amount of drunk drivers on the road. Nowadays with all of the distractions like cell phones and other forms of technology while driving, it is more important than ever that those behind the wheel of a vehicle are focused and alert. It is imperative that regulations be put in place such as raised taxes on alcohol, harsher punishments for driving drunk, and required alcohol education courses before being allowed to purchase or consume alcohol. These regulations will result in these United States being safer and altogether better off as a country.
