A Texas law firm has been paying attention to drunk driving in the state, in order to answer the question: Where are you most likely to be killed by a drunk driver in Texas?

Why ask the question? Drunk drivers are dangerous everywhere – they injure, kill, and cause sorrow and distress in every city and county.  But perhaps focusing on fatalities will get the attention of those who have the ability to prevent this crime. A drunk driver, after all, kills one person every 51 minutes in this country.

The list, compiled by Sutliff & Stout Injury and Accident Law Firm, uses TXDOT data to calculate which major towns and cities have the most DUI fatalities per capita.

As it turns out, these cities are the ones that came out the worst. The numbers refer to the number of alcohol-related fatalities per 100,000 population.

• Odessa 6.26
• Midland 6.19
• Dallas 5.88
• San Marcos 5.21
• San Antonio 5.15
• Baytown 5.12
• Longview 5.09
• Waco 4.63
• Houston 4.36
• Lubbock 4.1

What can we learn from this list? The cities range from Houston, with a population of 2.3 million, to San Marcos, which has just 62,000 people.  Geographically they are all over the map, and their economic and demographic profiles are different.

Here are some possible factors that unite this cities in this unhappy group:

• Culture of Drinking and Drunk Driving. Drinking is more popular in some places than others, and drunk driving is tolerated more in some places as well. No one knows exactly why this is, but it might be that people tend to be more easygoing about letting friends drive drunk in Odessa than they are in, say, Frisco or Brownsville, which have low DUI fatality numbers.
• Enforcement presence. If you know you are going to get pulled over, you’re more likely to watch what you drink before driving.  Cities with active sobriety checkpoints and DUI patrols not only catch more drunk drivers, but also warn other drivers to behave themselves.
• Interlock compliance. Texas has a good all-offender ignition interlock law. An ignition interlock, or car breathalyzer, prevents a vehicle from starting if the driver has been drinking. All those convicted of DUI are required to install the device. But not all offenders do. It’s very possible that some municipalities have a more lax oversight on interlock compliance, which means that it’s easier for first offenders to become repeat offenders who cause DUI fatalities.

There may be other reason, and we hope that other public-spirited institutions follow the example of Sutliff & Stout and dig into the data to reveal more about how and why we drink and drive, and how we can prevent it.

If you’ve followed Texas drunk driving laws over the past few years, you know that the state has really tried to address the growing problem of drunk drivers. They’ve struggled with losing ride sharing services in a major city, added ignition interlocks for all offenders, and attempted mass DWI checkpoints over the busy holiday season to arrest anyone who drives while intoxicated.

The efforts put forth by lawmakers and police officers appear to be working overall, but one county in Texas is still proving to be a problem. Montgomery County logged more Texas drunk driving arrests during the 2017 holiday season than they did in the last two years.

The holiday period, from November 22^nd until New Year’s Day, saw 322 people arrested for DWI. The year before they only saw 233, and the year before that they saw 117.

Why would a county see such a significant increase over a three-year period? For Montgomery County, it’s not that surprising. This county has been at the top of the list for Texas drunk driving arrests for several years, and DWI is the most popular offense in the area. According to one article, they generally log between 2,000 and 2,500 DWI cases every year. Police also believe that country roads play a factor. They’ve said that 74% of Montgomery County DWI crashes have happened in isolated or rural areas.

No matter what the reason, there’s one sure way to stop a drunk driving offender from continuing to drive after he or she is convicted of DWI. An ignition interlock—a device that requires an offender to blow an alcohol-free breath sample into it before the car will start, is required for all first-time offenders in every county in the state of Texas.

If Texas drunk driving offenders install them as ordered, it stands to reason that trouble spots like Montgomery County should see a significant decrease in their drunk driving statistics. Now that they’ve got so many DWI offenders on the books, Montgomery County should focus on ignition interlocks to prevent them from driving drunk again.

The biggest question people have about drinking and driving is, “How much is too much?” The answer to that question is simple: there is no safe amount of alcohol you can drink before you drive, and the Texas Department of Transportation would like you to be aware of that. The risk of your crashing or being arrested because of drunk driving in Texas can begin at very low levels of impairment.

According to TDOT, every 20 minutes someone in Texas is injured or killed because of an alcohol-related drunk driving crash. Given the risk, why do people drink and drive? It might be because they don’t realize that one drink might be all it takes to impair your driving skills.

Alcohol affects everyone in a different way

Alcohol has the power to affect your vision, hand/eye coordination, and motor skills, and the effects begin as soon as you’ve had your first drink. What happens after that drink hits your bloodstream depends on a few factors including whether you’re male or female, what your body weight is, and your age.

No every drink is created the same way either. Tall cans of beer look like one can, but they can include as many as three servings of beer. Cocktails you purchase in a club can have two or three different types of liquor, and some wines have more alcohol-content than others.

Because of those differences, no one can tell you that it’s safe to drive after drinking one drink. While one person will feel sober after one or two glasses of beer in an hour, another will be well on their way to impairment after drinking the same amount. That person could easily be arrested for drunk driving in Texas, all because they drank the same amount as another person.

If you’d like to have a drink with dinner or you want to drive home after you’ve been out drinking, your best option is to find a sober driver. If you have to ask yourself, “How much is too much?” you shouldn’t be driving.

There’s not much that can be said when a public servant makes the choice to drink and drive. It’s hard to understand how, after witnessing the crashes when someone drives drunk, they could do it themselves. It’s common too, or at least it might seem that way after a recent Texas DWI crash involving an off-duty firefighter.

The Dallas-based firefighter, Horace Shaw III, was driving after drinking at a local restaurant. He was speeding when he drove over a hill and crashed into an SUV with two occupants: a pregnant teenage girl and her boyfriend. They were both ejected from the vehicle and the teen, Alyssa Pimental, died of her injuries. Her unborn baby died as well.

According to witnesses who were there after the crash, Shaw couldn’t walk straight. He declined to answer questions and was taken to jail. Since that time he’s been charged with intoxication manslaughter, and that means a stiff sentence for causing a Texas DWI crash.

An intoxication manslaughter charge in Texas is much more severe than a first or even second Texas DWI offense. This is a second-degree felony. The offender, whether that person is a public servant or just a citizen of Texas, may spend up to 20 years in prison. He could also have to pay up to $10,000 in fines, and he’ll have to perform community service as well.

The tragedy of this Texas DWI crash is that a mother and her unborn baby were killed, all because someone decided to drive drunk. It’s horrible that a firefighter caused it; a man who worked with the department for 12 years, because he should have known better. Someone on the front lines of a drunk and drugged driving should have realized what one or two drinks could do to their driving skills. If he had, this never would have happened.

We like to think the people who create and enforce state laws are themselves above reproach. Politicians like state senators and councilmen, as well as law enforcement, should know the law better than anyone, but there seems to be a disconnect between some Texas lawmakers and Texas drunk driving laws.

A Tom Bean, Texas city councilman, Benjamin Vincent,  is the latest lawmaker in hot water in the Lone Star State. He didn’t just violate Texas drunk driving laws once; he did it twice, and managed to get a police officer fired along the way.

Vincent was driving his vehicle on a Saturday night when he veered into oncoming traffic. A police officer spotted him, and when he stopped him he was told by Vincent that he was a city councilman from a neighboring town. During the stop he also found out that Vincent was really drunk, and he admitted to drinking an entire bottle of wine before he drove.

Instead of arresting Vincent, the police officer allowed someone to come and pick him up and take him home. That should have been the end of that, because anyone who’s given a free pass and manages to avoid a DWI should never want to drink and drive again.

Unfortunately that was not the case. Having escaped jail and an immediate driver’s license suspension, he got behind the wheel drunk again on another Saturday evening. This time he crashed into another driver.

He’s now been arrested on a charge of intoxication assault with a vehicle, and if he’s convicted he could spend up to 10 years in prison. The officer who let him off the first time? He’s been fired from his job. Thankfully the victim in the crash didn’t die.

You can take a few things away from a case like this one. To start, law enforcement can’t give anyone a DWI pass, especially someone who should know Texas drunk driving laws. It also calls attention to the fact that the roads would be much safer if all drunk driving offenders in Texas would be required to install an ignition interlock in their vehicle right after arrest.

If he had been arrested the first time and he was released from jail shortly after, he could still have made the decision to drink and drive again. A driver’s license suspension won’t stop a drunk driver who’s determined to get behind the wheel; they’ll just drive anyway, so an ignition interlock is the only way to prevent them from driving again.

Let’s hope both lawmakers and police learned a valuable lesson from this case in Texas, and the next time someone mentions a city councilman and drunk driving in the same sentence, it’s because they are on the job and spending their time toughening up Texas drunk driving laws.

The Friday Fallout: Every Friday Guardian Interlock will bring you a unique drunk driving case that demonstrates the impact, or fallout, of drunk driving.