Here’s How RI Ranks Nationally In DUI Rates

A well-established national drug testing company recently published a comprehensive ranking of the states for rates of drunken driving, and Rhode Island ranked as one of the safer states in the country.

The findings were based on information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Transportation and FBI crime reports.

Rhode Island ranked 38th overall for drunken driving rates in 2018, with 229.2 DUI-related arrests per 100,000 people — well below the national average of 301.3 per 100,000.

Other metrics cited in the report showed the Ocean State has:

• Short-term rate change in DUI arrest rate: a decrease of 11.1 percent from 2014-2018
• Long-term rate change in DUI arrest rate: a decrease of 10.3 percentage points from 2009-2018

In the 10-year span from 2009 to 2018, Rhode Island peaked in 2011 with 287.13 arrests for every 100,000 people.

The United States overall has seen the population-adjusted rate of drunken driving arrests fall by more than 35 percent since 2009. Only three states — Delaware, Washington and North Dakota — recorded an increase in DUI arrests from 2009 to 2018.

Adults in the United States participate in close to 130 million examples of drunken driving every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirty Americans are killed in drunken driving incidents every day, according to U.S. Drug Test Centers.

South Dakota ranked as the state with the most DUI incidents during 2018, the researchers found, followed by North Dakota and Wyoming.

The state with the lowest drunken driving rate in the nation? That commendable distinction went to Delaware, with 44.3 DUI arrests per 100,000 people. The other bottom five states with the lowest rates for drunken driving arrests were Illinois, Massachusetts, Louisiana and Florida.

Men are far more likely than women to be arrested on drunken driving charges, as males accounted for nearly three in four DUI arrests in 2018, according to U.S. Drug Test Centers. Additionally, whites accounted for 81.2 percent of DUI arrests in 2018, according to the report.

Here are the 10 states with the highest rates of DUI arrests in 2018:

1. South Dakota: 721.9 arrests per 100,000 people
2. North Dakota: 678.4 arrests per 100,000 people
3. Wyoming: 676.1 arrests per 100,000 people
4. North Carolina: 518.8 arrests per 100,000 people
5. Mississippi: 462.2 arrests per 100,000 people
6. New Mexico: 459.7 arrests per 100,000 people
7. Maine: 434.2 arrests per 100,000 people
8. Washington: 430.2 arrests per 100,000 people
9. Alaska: 429.2 arrests per 100,000 people
10. Wisconsin: 425.3 arrests per 100,000 people

The full report on drunken driving in the United States is available at USDrugTestCenters.com.