Is Iowa losing the fight against drunk driving?

Iowa’s drunken drivers are more intoxicated and killing more people — yet fewer of them are losing their licenses, state data show.

The numbers are stark:

• Intoxication levels have risen four consecutive years among motorists caught driving while impaired, who have an average blood alcohol concentration more than twice the legal limit.
• Drunken driving fatalities climbed to 123 last year, even as the state's overall crash deaths fell. Intoxicated drivers caused 38 percent of all Iowa vehicle fatalities in 2015, compared with 31 percent in 2012.
• Despite those increases, Iowa license revocations for operating while intoxicated have dropped every year since 2008. Last year, nearly 14,000 Iowans lost their licenses for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence — 7,500 fewer than a decade earlier. During the same time, the number of licensed drivers on Iowa roads grew by 23 percent.

The grim statistics from the state’s Department of Transportation indicate that Iowa is losing ground in its fight against drunken driving — even as the Iowa Legislature continues to stymie efforts to strengthen the impaired-driving laws.

A report issued Wednesday  in a high-profile crash that killed four people accentuated the urgency Iowa faces. A wrong-way driver on Interstate 80 in late March had a blood alcohol concentration nearly three times the legal limit and had recently used marijuana when he slammed into a Des Moines police vehicle at 102 miles an hour near Waukee.

MORE: 

• A drunken driver killed her husband 23 years ago, and it still hurts
• Video: Drunken driver killed Mary Roche's husband 23 years ago

The driver, two Des Moines police officers and their prisoner were killed.

“We’re hoping that (the accident) serves as a wake-up call,” said Patrick Hoye, bureau chief of the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau. “The current culture has to change. We’re losing too many lives on Iowa highways to impairment.”

This  month, the Traffic Safety Bureau plans to gather a group to formulate recommendations on how to better deter impaired driving.

A stubborn drinking problem

State agencies launched a program called Zero Fatalities nearly two years ago to reduce to zero the number of people killed on Iowa highways. The program includes public service announcements aired on television, radio and on social media and flashing highway message boards.

Headway has been made. In 2012, 365 people were killed on Iowa roads; the number dropped to 320 in 2015, according to the DOT.

But deaths due to impaired driving have been going in the wrong direction.

In 2012, Iowa lost 114 people because of drunken and drug-impaired drivers, DOT data show. By 2015, that death toll had risen to 123, the data show.

Nationwide, the country has similarly struggled with drunken driving. Across the U.S., 31 percent of traffic fatalities were caused by impaired drivers, resulting in 9,967 deaths, 2014 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data show.

In addition, a special 2012 federal investigative report stated that while fatal motor vehicle crashes have declined, the number of fatal wrong-way crashes is unchanged. The report also found that 60 percent of wrong-way drivers involved in fatal crashes were intoxicated, most with a blood alcohol concentration nearly two times the legal limit.

Mary Roche, whose husband was killed 23 years ago by a drunken driver, said attitudes about driving impaired need to change.

“Somehow we believe we have the right to drive if we’re impaired,” said Roche, of Waterloo. “People minimize the effects of their impairment — they think, ‘I’m not drunk, I can handle it.’ No, you can’t.”

Attitudes about driving while impaired have shifted in other countries, Roche said, noting that people plan ahead about getting home if they are going to be drinking. That culture shift hasn’t happened in the United States, she said.

“It’s hard to stay hopeful that we’re going to see an improvement,” she said.

A tragic lesson

On Wednesday, Iowa public safety investigators released information that showed Benjamin E. Beary, 25, of Knoxville, had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.223 percent when his vehicle slammed head-on into a Ford Explorer carrying Des Moines police Officers Carlos Puente-Morales, 34, and Susan Farrell, 30, and Tosha Nicole Hyatt, 32, a prisoner they were transporting from Council Bluffs.

Court records show Beary had several arrests for alcohol-related offenses, including driving while intoxicated.

His high blood alcohol level, nearly three times the legal limit of 0.08 percent to be considered drunken driving, is becoming a more common occurrence in Iowa, DOT data show.

The average blood alcohol level of drivers charged with operating while intoxicated has increased every year since 2011, rising from 0.160 percent to 0.163 percent in 2015, DOT data show.

The spike is especially worrisome, the traffic safety bureau’s Hoye said.

“We’re concerned that we might be seeing over-serving of patrons by our establishments,” he said. “The other thing is the invention of craft beers. Two beers is no longer just two beers, if the alcohol content is 10 percent.”

Ways to decrease drunken driving

During the 1980s and 1990s, half of all traffic fatalities nationally were caused by intoxicated drivers, a federal official said.

Now, impaired drivers cause about one-third of traffic deaths. But that ratio hasn’t improved in recent years, officials said.

The reason is simple, said Bella Dinh-Zarr, vice chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“We are not taking advantage of the tools we could be using to stop impaired driving,” she said.

The NTSB has recommended several ways to reduce deaths by intoxicated drivers:

• Lowering the legal blood alcohol concentration level to 0.05 from 0.08 percent;
• Increasing enforcement, including checkpoints and saturation patrols;
• Requiring ignition interlock devices on vehicles driven by OWI offenders, even if it's their first offense.

While many countries, especially in Europe, have lowered their legal blood alcohol level, U.S. states have been reluctant to follow suit; none has so far, Dinh-Zarr said.

“Research in those countries has shown that .05 law is a broad deterrent,” she said. “Those countries aren’t seeing a drop in consumption, but they are seeing fewer fatalities” from drunken driving.

Ignition interlock devices are also an effective deterrent, she said.

Before vehicles can be started, drivers must blow into a device that determines whether they have been drinking. If they have, the vehicle won’t turn on.

Interlock devices “prevents people from actually driving after they’ve been drinking,” Dinh-Zarr said. “We’re not telling them that they can’t have a drink, but it’s a tool that will help them to keep driving but not hurt anyone.”

Currently, 23 states have mandatory ignition interlock provisions for all levels of intoxicated-driving offenses, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Iowa is not among them.

For at least two years, some Iowa lawmakers have tried to pass legislation requiring the devices for first-time offenders, a proposal supported by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Iowa law now requires the devices for repeat offenders.

Rep. Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, said resistance to expanding the devices stems from concerns that some people couldn't afford them. Some lawmakers had suggested creating a taxpayer-supported fund that would have paid for devices for low-income residents, he said.

The devices cost up to $150 to install and an additional $50 to $70 a month for rent and other fees, according to MADD.

“My contention was that if you can’t afford an interlock device, you probably can’t afford to be drinking anyway,” said Baltimore, chairman of the judiciary committee.

Exploring mandatory breath tests

This year, Iowa lawmakers proposed creating 24/7 Sobriety Program pilot projects in interested counties.

In general, people convicted of an alcohol- or drug-related offense, including driving while intoxicated, would be required to check in and take a breath test twice a day. Those who tested positive for alcohol or some other drug would face immediate consequences, including being taken to jail.

Omaha launched a pilot program in 2014. It has been in place since 2005 in most counties in South Dakota, which had one of the country’s highest rates of intoxicated driving.

According to the South Dakota attorney general’s website, the pass rate of the breath tests over a five-year period was 99 percent, and alcohol-related fatalities have fallen by as much as 33 percent in one year.

The Iowa Senate passed the proposal, but it stalled in the Iowa House. Among the groups registered against it were the Justice Reform Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which prefers mandatory ignition interlock devices.

Baltimore said he likes the 24/7 Sobriety Program because “it changes a person’s drinking behavior. If you blow positive, you go straight to jail.”

He said he’s frustrated that lawmakers have been unable to pass any recent bills to strengthen the state's drunken driving laws.

“You think you have a good public policy idea, and then it’s frustrating that you can’t get it passed,” he said. “But if we can have some discussions about it this summer, we come back next year.”

Why revocations are falling

A more curious problem is why OWI revocations have been consistently falling across Iowa, even as drunken driving fatalities and impairment levels are rising.

The number of people whose driver’s license has been revoked for OWI has fallen in Iowa to 13,938 in 2015 from 22,017 in 2006 — a 37 percent decrease.

DATABASE: Annual revocations in Iowa counties

Officials with the DOT and law enforcement offered two reasons for the decline: Fewer officers are on patrol because of budget cuts, leading to fewer arrests, and fewer drunken drivers are on the roadways.

Data from the Polk County Jail shows that in 2008, 2,200 people were booked on charges of operating while intoxicated. Last year, that number dropped to 1,713.

Some officers said they also suspect that more people are using driver services such as Uber after a night out drinking.

“We’re hoping that fewer people are driving drunk,” said Hoye. But, he added, “a lot of departments have told us they don’t have the same amount of officers they used to. If there’s less officers out there, that probably means fewer tickets are being written.”

Hoye said law enforcement agencies are making efforts to increase their presence and deter drunken drivers. On Saturday, for instance, the Central Iowa Traffic Safety Task Force was scheduled to be in Clive enforcing drunken driving and other traffic laws.

The statewide coalition will also discuss whether more enforcement is needed in areas with especially high numbers of alcohol-related crashes.

The increase in fatalities “is an unacceptable consequence to impaired driving,” Hoye said. “This is preventable. That’s the sad part.”