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“… 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 (DWI). And, there are many theories on how to stop it. There have been moderate successes, but also brutal failures. We first have to look at the facts of impairment before we get to the theories. There are several broad categories of impairments: alcohol, drugs, sleep deprivation and distraction. These impairments are facts. Example: studies confirm that the major threats to an accident occur at the higher blood alcohol levels. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported, “In 1999, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 30 percent of all traffic deaths occurred in accidents in which at least one driver or nonoccupant has a BAC of .10 or higher and at least some alcohol was present in 38% of all fatal crashes.” A further fact is that an impaired driver with a blood alcohol reading of .15 is 200 times the crash risk of someone not 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 have a prescriptive component: if we do this, that will happen. The unfortunate aspect of DWI intervention is that it is imperfect and incomplete. Yes, many DWIs are caught, adjudicated and incarcerated. Many more still offend day after week after month after year. We 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 including insufficient attention to the task of driving. 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. Further, there is a jingoistic tradition in America to use slogans for our theories. “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” and other slogans. Each is a theory. 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 you lose other than you lose generally. The theory of this slogan is that the potential offender is able to calculate the risk of loss before their impairment behavior and so make a rational decision not to do it. Perhaps it works for some, obviously 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. This asks the theoretical question? 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? Such as, first offense the offender loses their license to drive for five years. Second time, forever and ever, amen. Will it work? A different problem would arise, people driving without a license. Already a problem, it would explode. Jail ‘em Danno 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. © 2007 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. |
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