We must focus on collecting facts and developing better theories to combat impaired driving

© 2007 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.

“… facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. … Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.” – Stephen Jay Gould, 1981.

It is a fact people drive while impaired. There are many theories on how to stop it. There have been moderate successes, but also brutal failures. Before we get to the theories, we first have to look at the facts of impairment.

There are several broad categories of impairment: alcohol, drugs, sleep deprivation and distraction. These impairments are facts. For example, in 1999 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that alcohol was present in 38 percent of all fatal crashes.

It is a fact that an impaired driver with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 is 200 times the crash risk of someone who has not been drinking. But alcohol is not the only problem. Drugs, sleep deprivation and distraction kill people just a certainly as alcohol. These are facts. Wherever you were last night, somewhere near you someone was behind the wheel of a car and was impaired.

All good theories on how to combat such activity have a prescriptive component: If we do this, that will happen. The unfortunate aspect of intervention is that it is imperfect and incomplete. Yes, many impaired drivers are caught, adjudicated and incarcerated. Many more still offend day after week after month after year. We still wake to headlines proclaiming a family was slaughtered by an impaired driver.

In many accidents, the source of impairment is not definite enough to be documented. It is possible that impairment is the major source of vehicle collisions. Perhaps there are no “accidents;” instead, they are all events that can be described by impairment of alcohol, drugs, sleep deprivation and distracted behavior.

There are theories of impairment reaching back into the antecedents of each offender. Were they educated about impaired driving? Are they careless, reckless and prone to flaunt authority? We would like to make an omnibus theory of impairment so we can predict which person will be an impaired driver. However, we find no such theory available.

Slogans, tough penalties aren’t enough

Further, there is a jingoistic tradition in America to use slogans for our theories, including the common phrase “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” Each is a theory. The term “friends” theorizes that peers can reduce impairment accidents by not standing by idly. “No buddy, I’m keeping your keys until you are able to drive safely.” It works some of the time.

There is the relatively new, “You Drink, You Drive, You Lose.” I was talking to a state policeman about DWI efforts in our state when this officer asked an interesting question: How many people know what you lose with a DWI?

It is just a veiled threat. No one could articulate what, specifically, you lose. The theory of this slogan is that the potential offender is able to calculate the risk of loss before his or her impairment behavior and so make a rational decision not to do it. Perhaps it works for some, but it obviously does not for others.

The major impairment theory in America is that threat of a penalty can cause a change of behavior. The penalties for impaired driving have been increasing as politicians stand before the cameras and proclaim that they have a solution for this scourge – tougher and tougher penalties.

Can we as a society tough our way out of this? Can we elevate the penalties for impaired driving to the point that it disappears? For example, what if we took away a driver’s license for five years on a first offense? Second time, forever and ever, amen. Would that work?

More people would drive without a license. Already a problem, such activity would explode. Such an approach has a number of resultant, profound problems.

Also, we wonder, if someone is killed by an impaired driver, does the type of impairment matter? Should penalties be different for the four kinds of impairment? For someone being run over by an impaired driver, I suspect the tires feel pretty much the same.

Finally, can technology be our savior? No. It can help with monitoring, but ultimately there are two components to a better theory of impairment intervention: We will not eradicate impaired driving, but we can reduce the problem more than we are now by collecting the facts and working on better theories.

Michael Swickard is an occasional columnist for Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics. The Morning Show with Michael Swickard is on from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday on KSNM-AM 570 in Las Cruces. Michael’s e-mail address is michael@swickard.com.