Study shows repeat DWI offenders common

Despite an overall decrease in drunken driving among college students, a study by an MU researcher has found that many will drink and drive despite the consequences.

Denis McCarthy, the MU assistant professor of psychology who conducted the study, said drunken driving has become far less common over the last 20 years with increased law enforcement. But some people are hard to change.

The study, published recently in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, surveyed 938 students, most of whom were under 21, about past experiences as well as current behaviors with drinking and driving. Of the 160 who had experienced some kind of negative consequence from drinking and driving, such as an arrest or citation, most said they were continuing to drink and drive or ride in cars with drunken drivers. McCarthy said they also had increased the frequency of such behavior after experiencing the negative consequences.

“Those people are the ones who have a hard time really thinking through the consequences,” McCarthy said. “It’s similar to getting a speeding ticket. People think they were just unlucky and that there’s no way it will happen to them again.”

The fear of being arrested, however, may be keeping those who don’t drink and drive from doing it in the first place. Kim Dude, director of the MU Wellness Center, said the rates of drunken driving among college students as a whole have gone down 16 percent over the last three years, while driving while intoxicated arrests by MUPD have increased.

Arrests by the Columbia Police Department have also risen. From 2000 to 2003, the department averaged about 400 DWI arrests each year, Columbia police Sgt. Tim Moriarity said. In 2004, the number of arrests increased to 600, and this year that number will likely be surpassed with DWI arrests so far this year already near last year’s total.

The problem is not exclusive to college students, though Moriarity said most arrests for DWI occur among people 21 to 25 years old.

The combination of being new to drinking and relatively new to driving, Moriarity said, makes that age group especially dangerous on the road.

“Young drivers often think they’re invincible,” he said. “The biggest problem is that they don’t have enough experience with alcohol to understand how it impairs their ability to recognize hazards.”

When students have options, Dude said, they tend to choose safer alternatives to driving drunk.

Supportive Tigers Riding in Pursuit of Ensuring Safety, an MU program that provides students with free rides from bars and parties, has seen evidence of that trend. Dude said STRIPES has given a total of more than 45,000 rides over the last four years.

But McCarthy’s study shows that some students are not taking advantage of safer alternatives and are not deterred by arrests.

More visible prevention, such as ­sobriety checkpoints, he said, might be effective for people who habitually drink and drive.

“If they knew before they got into the car that they would be caught, they wouldn’t do it,” he said. “It’s not about punishing more severely, but making punishment more likely.”

Liana Cecil, an MU senior, says that strong incentives to not drink and drive do not exist.

“I have several friends who have a DWI,” Cecil said. “Besides having to pay a lot of money in fines and lawyer fees, most of the people I know don’t worry about the consequences.”

Cecil told a story about when she was in her friend’s car last year after both of them had been drinking. After going to a concert downtown and drinking tequila shots, Cecil thought her friend was sober enough to drive. But when she rolled through a stop sign, a police car flashed its lights and pulled the car over. Columbia police officers then gave Cecil’s friend, the driver, several sobriety tests.

“That’s when I noticed that her speech wasn’t that great,” Cecil said.

According to Missouri law, a person commits the crime of “driving with excessive blood alcohol content” if the person operates a motor vehicle with eight-hundredths of 1 percent or more by weight of alcohol in his or her blood. On the Breathalyzer test, Cecil said her friend blew a 0.16 — twice the Missouri legal limit. She was arrested and taken to jail where Cecil and other friends bailed her out for $600.

Cecil said she and her friends never considered calling STRIPES.

“It isn’t convenient, and I’ve heard that it takes forever,” Cecil said. “I don’t even know the phone number.”

Deciding whether to drive after she has been drinking herself, Cecil said she trusts her own judgement. When in doubt, she finds somebody else to drive. Asked whether her friend continues to drink and drive, Cecil said yes.

“Her only regret about the DWI is the money that she had to pay,” Cecil said.

Police try to prevent drunken driving by enforcing open-container and minor-in-possession laws before people get to their cars, Moriarity said. The Columbia Police Department recently received an $8,000 grant to put more officers on the streets on weekends to arrest impaired drivers. Moriarity said they try to have between two and six officers on that duty each weekend.

People who choose to drink and drive, he said, often are not aware of the “hidden fees” that result from driving drunk.

“You don’t just pay a fine,” he said. “There’s the cost of towing your car, bonding out of jail, hiring a lawyer, higher insurance rates and renewing your license — it could cost you up to $3,000.”

Dude, of MU’s Wellness Center, said the permanent costs of drinking and driving lie down the road.

“We try to help (students) understand that a DWI goes on your permanent record,” she said. “It will be there when you apply for a job.”

Moriarity said it’s hard to know what kind of deterrent will work for everyone.

“If any one of them had to go knock on a door to tell a parent that their child died because of drunken driving,” Moriarity said, “that would be a sobering experience.”

Missourian reporter Shane Epping contributed to this report.