Impaired Driving

Educate the police, community leaders, the public, and traffic safety partners on the role of regular traffic enforcement stops as a primary tool in detecting impaired drivers, and encourage their use to reduce impaired crashes. Identify trends in driving under the influence (DUI) arrests, and compare the data to trends in citations and crashes for use in education.

1. Review available resources on traffic stop volume and its relation to DUI arrests and impaired-driving fatalities. Gather existing data from the Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA) annual report and the Texas Municipal Courts Education Center (TMCEC) on trends in traffic stops.
2. Correlate traffic stop data to driving while intoxicated (DWI) arrest data from OCA and impaired-driving data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
3. Create a data report based on the existing report from TMCEC.
4. Disperse those data to traffic safety partners and policy makers.
5. Prepare a presentation of those data, and arrange speakers to convey those data to the Texas Sheriff’s Association, Texas Police Chiefs Association, DPS, Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE), safety coalitions, and other police and police leadership groups. Prepare articles for publication in their newsletters, websites, and other publications.
6. Prepare and disseminate public information based on this research.
7. Convey this information to the Texas Legislature and other public policy makers.

OCA, TMCEC, Sheriff’s Association of Texas, Texas Police Chiefs Association, DPS, TCOLE, and city and county agencies

• Finding local and state leaders/champions.
• Developing partnerships necessary for implementing this countermeasure.
• Obtaining sustained and sufficient funding.
• Need for police chiefs to support community outreach.