National Hardcore Drunk Driver Project

Promising Strategies, Laws, and Programs

Hardcore drunk drivers are responsible for 68% of all drunk driving fatalities and are 380 times more likely to be involved in a crash. Drivers with blood alcohol concentration levels in excess of .15 are only one percent of all drivers on weekend nights; however, they are involved in nearly 50% of all fatal crashes during that time.

In 1997, The Century Council launched The National Hardcore Drunk Driving Project to develop programs that advocate swift identification, certain punishment, and effective treatment to reduce hardcore drunk driving. In 1998, the Project held a series of forums in Massachusetts, Texas and Ohio that were designed to foster the beginning of a national dialogue focusing on shared problems and creative solutions, and led to the foundation of strong alliances with other public and private organizations engaged in the fight against drunk driving. Each forum concentrated on a particular dimension of the hardcore drunk driving dilemma – treatment, sentencing, enforcement, sanctions, and prosecution – and included participants from additional states whose expertise was especially valuable to the topic.

Guided by experts in alcohol abuse, law enforcement, and traffic safety, we developed Combating Hardcore Drunk Driving, a sourcebook to help fight the problem more effectively and assist legislators, highway safety officials, law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors, community activists, and treatment professionals in developing programs to reduce and eliminate hardcore drunk driving.

Combating Hardcore Drunk Driving was the first traffic safety community effort to provide a single, comprehensive resource to assist in reducing fatalities, injuries, and crashes caused by repeat offenders and drivers with high blood alcohol concentration levels of .15 and above. The sourcebook includes information on a broad range of policies, laws, sanctions, and treatment programs, and was culled from professionals in the fields of alcohol abuse and traffic safety and from surveys of U.S. territories, special jurisdictions, and every state.

For more information on the Combating Hardcore Drunk Driving sourcebook, please click here.