drunk drivers killed two to four times more than agrresive

Studies show that between 25 and 40 percent of people arrested for drunk driving have a previous conviction, and people with a previous conviction are 4.1 times more likely to be involved in a fatal accident than the general population, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But they've done little to curb alcoholics and other hard-core drinkers who regularly have a few too many and get behind the wheel. have scared many teenagers and legal social drinkers into using designated drivers. Studies show that public education campaigns - red ribbons at Christmas, emotional television commercials about dead loved ones, etc. The depressing shift can be blamed largely on repeat offenders, particularly those ages 21 to 45. After falling for more than a decade, alcohol-related driving fatalities nationwide rose 4.2 percent in 1995 (1996 numbers are not yet available). In many areas of the country, judges, prosecutors and probation officers are struggling to produce similar transformations of equally hard-headed, chronic drunk drivers, because that seems to be the only way to reverse the troubling rebound in drunk-driving deaths. Now Hornberger, 31, has been clean and sober for five years, and he recently got his first valid driver's license since the one he lost at age 22. He was committed to a state mental hospital for nearly five months. It would blow over.'įinally, faced with two pending charges of being a habitual offender, Hornberger allowed his lawyer to have him declared not guilty because of temporary insanity. 'I'd find myself behind bars wondering, how did I get here?' Hornberger said. Hornberger served three months in the Arlington County jail after a 1989 arrest, but it made little impact. And that doesn't count all the times he drove drunk and didn't get caught. The Fairfax resident had three drunk-driving arrests, lost his license, faced four habitual-offender charges and was in a car accident that hurt two people. The problem now facing law enforcement officials is what to do about people like Keith Hornberger. After much success discouraging social drinkers from taking a chance behind the wheel, drunk-driving deaths are again rising.

The nation's decade-long campaign against drunk driving has hit a rough patch of road.

Drunk drivers killed two to four times more than agrresive