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Mixing alcohol and motor vehicles is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Studies show that the risk of a fatal crash starts to increase significantly even before you reach a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, which is the legal limit in every U.S. state except Utah. In fact, your reaction time while driving can be impacted by a BAC as low as 0.02%.
And younger drivers — particularly young men — are especially likely to be the ones involved in alcohol-related crashes.
The results are chilling: A person dies every 39 minutes in a car crash involving a drunk driver, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, leading to thousands of preventable deaths every year.
To try to quantify just how much alcohol increases the danger of car crashes, we used records from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database. We looked into more than 7,000 fatal crashes involving alcohol across the country in 2022, comparing them to non-alcohol-related crashes and crashes in previous years to find the things that set them apart.
The FARS data shows some positive developments. Overall, fatal drunk driving crashes dropped to 7,405, a 5% decrease year over year. However, the pattern is much less consistent from state to state.
In Washington, there were 128 fatal crashes in 2022 involving drivers who had been drinking. That’s a 49% year-over-year increase, catapulting the state from #29 in fatal drunk driving crashes in 2021 to #19 in 2022.
And it’s the fourth largest increase by percentage, behind only Georgia — where alcohol-related fatal crashes more than doubled — Oregon, and New Hampshire. Arkansas and Oklahoma were the only states where fatal drunk driving crashes fell by at least 50% year over year.
| State | Fatal crashes with alcohol, 2021 | Fatal crashes with alcohol, 2022 | Change (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia | 101 | 215 | 113% |
| Oregon | 50 | 85 | 70% |
| New Hampshire | 14 | 21 | 50% |
| Washington | 86 | 128 | 49% |
| Maine | 29 | 43 | 48% |
| Delaware | 27 | 38 | 41% |
| New Mexico | 57 | 74 | 30% |
| West Virginia | 38 | 48 | 26% |
| Wyoming | 30 | 37 | 23% |
| Maryland | 85 | 102 | 20% |
| North Dakota | 23 | 27 | 17% |
| Colorado | 179 | 198 | 11% |
| Minnesota | 88 | 97 | 10% |
| Pennsylvania | 182 | 194 | 7% |
| Vermont | 24 | 25 | 4% |
| Alabama | 118 | 120 | 2% |
| California | 918 | 938 | 2% |
| Texas | 922 | 930 | 1% |
| Massachusetts | 55 | 55 | 0% |
| Mississippi | 116 | 116 | 0% |
| Indiana | 147 | 145 | -1% |
| New Jersey | 149 | 148 | -1% |
| Tennessee | 265 | 262 | -1% |
| Missouri | 175 | 172 | -2% |
| South Carolina | 299 | 293 | -2% |
| Virginia | 125 | 122 | -2% |
| Hawaii | 35 | 34 | -3% |
| Utah | 52 | 50 | -4% |
| Illinois | 131 | 123 | -6% |
| Nebraska | 47 | 44 | -6% |
| Arizona | 167 | 154 | -8% |
| Kansas | 92 | 85 | -8% |
| Michigan | 300 | 275 | -8% |
| Louisiana | 225 | 201 | -11% |
| District of Columbia | 8 | 7 | -13% |
| Iowa | 83 | 72 | -13% |
| Idaho | 70 | 60 | -14% |
| New York | 153 | 131 | -14% |
| Nevada | 81 | 69 | -15% |
| Kentucky | 142 | 119 | -16% |
| Alaska | 18 | 15 | -17% |
| Wisconsin | 163 | 132 | -19% |
| Florida | 619 | 490 | -21% |
| Ohio | 222 | 168 | -24% |
| North Carolina | 359 | 258 | -28% |
| Connecticut | 68 | 46 | -32% |
| Montana | 99 | 67 | -32% |
| South Dakota | 47 | 29 | -38% |
| Rhode Island | 13 | 7 | -46% |
| Oklahoma | 115 | 56 | -51% |
| Arkansas | 174 | 80 | -54% |
King County tied for the most fatal drunk driving crashes in the state in 2021, with 16. Unfortunately, that number spiked by 50% to 24 fatal crashes in 2022, still the most in Washington.
Also troubling: Neighboring Snohomish County reported 14 fatal crashes involving alcohol in 2022 after having just one such crash in 2021.
Of the fatal crashes that do not involve alcohol, the most common window of time is from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., when evening commutes typically take place; roughly 1 in 4 fatal crashes happens during that period.
But when you add alcohol to the mix, the balance shifts much more heavily to night driving. Both nationwide and in Washington, 30% of fatal crashes involving alcohol happen between 8 p.m. and midnight, followed closely by the window from midnight to 4 a.m.
And in King County, over 40% of fatal drunk driving crashes happen between midnight and 4 a.m. (the smaller sample size when looking at a single county can cause larger variance).
Data for this analysis comes from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a database of all fatal U.S. motor vehicle crashes maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Information on fatal crashes from 2022, the most recent year available, was released in April 2024.
We used fields in the FARS data tables to identify fatal crashes in which drunk driving was a factor and compared the number and characteristics of those crashes to previous years at the national, state, and county level.
Feel free to use data from this analysis elsewhere, but if you do, please link back to this page and credit Malcolm Law for attribution purposes.