What to Do with the Impaired Drivers We’ve Stopped—And the Ones We Haven’t

DWI arrests in North Carolina’s capital city are on the rise. The Wake County district attorney’s office expects to prosecute around 7,000 DWI cases this fiscal year—2,000 more than it handled in 2013-14.  The increased arrests result from beefed up patrol activity made possible by federal grants. And there is some speculation that the decline in fatal alcohol-related accidents in Raleigh from the previous year may be related to the additional arrests. Yet people continue to drive while impaired in Raleigh and elsewhere in North Carolina, sometimes with tragic consequences. And every DWI charge adds a court case to an already crowded district court docket. I wonder: Can we prosecute away the risks posed by impaired drivers? Increased arrests.  Experts agree that increased enforcement—or at least the public perception of increased enforcement—is part of the solution to the impaired driving problem.  Most impaired drivers are not arrested the first time they drive while impaired.  To the contrary, researchers estimate that a typical impaired driver will drive while impaired 50 to 200 times before being stopped by law enforcement. Once a driver has driven while impaired on numerous occasions without being stopped, he may rationally conclude that the risk of arrest is low.  High-visibility enforcement, including well-publicized DWI checkpoints, counter that notion by creating, as one leading researcher put it, “the perception that police are out there looking for impaired drivers.” Crowded dockets. Lorrin Freeman, Wake County’s newly elected district attorney, noted that the 2,000 additional DWI cases “’still have to go [...]