Horrific Van Crash Highlights Disturbing Trend in Female DUIs

Women in the U.S. are drinking and driving drunk more, experts point out in the wake of a drunk-driving crash in upstate New York where a mother and seven others died.

The Associated Press reported Aug. 6 that while most drunk drivers are men, DUI arrests among women rose 28.8 percent between 1998 and 2007, while such arrests declined 7.5 percent among men.

Some of the rise in arrests of women could be attributed to police being less inclined to look the other way when females are pulled over. But Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said, “Women are picking up some of the dangerously bad habits of men,” and Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety added: “Younger women feel more empowered, more equal to men, and have been beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men.”

In the New York case, driver Diane Schuler was legally drunk and had marijuana in her system when her van plowed head-on into another car while driving the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway. The victims included Schuler, her two-year-old daughter, three nieces, and three men in the car she struck.

 “We realized for the last two to three years, the pattern of more female drivers, particularly mothers with kids in their cars, getting arrested for drunk driving,” said Tom Meier, director of Drug Prevention and Stop DWI for Westchester County, where the crash occurred.

“Drunk drivers often carry their kids with them,” said Hurley of MADD. “It’s the ultimate form of child abuse.”

This year, the U.S. Transportation Department’s annual crackdown on drunk driving will focus on women. “There’s the impression out there that drunk driving is strictly a male issue, and it is certainly not the case,” said Rae Tyson of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “There are a number of parts of the country where, in fact, the majority of impaired drivers involved in fatal crashes are female.”