April is Alcohol Awareness Month. And this year, it comes on the heels of tragic local incidents that are a result of people continuing to drive under the influence (DUI).
On February 27, a 16-year-old Chantilly High School student was killed in Centreville in a head-on crash caused by a suspected drunken driver. And in March, Gabriel Rincon, 23, of Fairfax, was sentenced for involuntary manslaughter for a crash that killed 30-year-old Sohail Iqbal of Manassas. Rincon was driving under the influence at 110 miles per hour when he caused the fatal crash.
Troubling DUI Data
These crashes coincide with troubling data about drunk driving in the region.
In the DC area, DUI fatalities rose by more than 4 percent in 2023, according to Kurt Erickson, president of the Washington Regional Alcohol Program. The region includes several Maryland counties, DC, and four Northern Virginia counties.
“They’re up for the second year in a row, which is frustrating,” Erickson says. “It’s going against the national grain, because nationally, drunk driving fatalities are down by over 7 percent.”
The local picture is mixed. Fairfax County saw DUI fatalities drop nearly 23 percent last year. However, Arlington County experienced a 100 percent increase in DUI deaths in both 2022 and 2023. And despite improvements, Fairfax still averages a DUI crash every 13 hours. Erickson says this statistic underscores how far the region still has to go.
“We’re up for the second year in a row with local fatalities. These are 100 percent preventable incidents,” he says. “It’s about reminding people that the fight against drunk driving is far from over.”
Candace Lightner, founder of the Alexandria-based nonprofit We Save Lives and the original founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, cites what she sees as declining enforcement of impaired driving laws.
“We need more police specifically trained in recognizing impairment, conducting field sobriety tests and investigating DUI cases as well as utilizing resources like Drug Recognition Expert training,” she says. “More trained officers lead to more DUI enforcement efforts and a greater likelihood of taking impaired drivers off the road and saving more lives.”
Statewide Efforts
The message resonates beyond the region; Virginia is dealing with a troubling trend. The Commonwealth recorded the ninth-highest increase in DUI crash fatalities over the past five years, according to a report from Journo Research for AskDave.com, based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data between 2018 and 2022.
During that time, the percentage of drivers involved in fatal crashes who were under the influence rose by more than 44 percent. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles reports that, in 2022, an average of one person was killed and 11 others were injured every single day in DUI-related crashes.
Enforcement and strong penalties remain key tools in prevention. Virginia is known for having some of the strictest drunk driving laws in the nation. A first offense results in an automatic one-year license suspension. A second conviction leads to a three-year suspension — and if it occurs within five years of the first, there’s a mandatory minimum jail sentence of 20 days.
A Nationwide Crisis
Virginia is not alone. Drunk, drugged, and distracted driving remains a serious problem across the country. In 2022, 3,308 people were killed and another 290,000 injured in crashes involving distracted drivers, according to the NHTSA.
Locally, experts are still searching for answers. “We should be able to lick this,” says Erickson. “It’s uniquely frustrating that we haven’t.”
Feature image courtesy Alexander Raths/stock.adobe.com
