ABSTRACT
Research on drunk driving by highway safety and public health scholars runs at least as far back as the 1930s. During the 1980s, drunk driving has been pushed to the forefront of people agenda of social problems. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, drunk driving arrests increased by 50 percent to 1.8 million per year. In many localities and states, such as New York, anti-drunk driving efforts have become institutionalized in special-interest agencies or programs. The criminologist who sets out to analyze drunk driving immediately faces a data problem—the amount of offending is unknown and probably unknowable. Drunk driving countermeasures are made even more difficult to evaluate by the abundance of concurrent, relevant developments. In addition to initiatives in policing, prosecution, probation, and punishment, we have also seen a number of new treatment and education programs.
