Cities With The Most DUIs: How Does Your City Rank?

September is definitely a month for changes. Fall is in the air. Students are headed back to school, and college-age students may find themselves now able to attend bars and "of-age" parties.

Fall also means that several holidays--Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas--are right around the corner. These holidays are actively known for friends, family, and often, celebratory apertifs.

With the increased festivities comes a higher risk for driving accidents. One way is to protect yourself from drunk drivers is to stay out of the cities where we're most likely to encounter them.

Here are some of the top cities ranked by DUI busts (Source):

• San Diego has the most DUI drivers per capita than any other city in the U.S., followed by San Jose. The reason? San Diego and San Jose have an exceptionally strong drunk driving task force, and the police there actively patrol for violators. In San Diego, a team of six officers, specially trained to spot the subtle signs of drunk driving, spend 40 hours a week making DUI arrests, through both checkpoints and “saturation patrols.”
• California takes four of the top 10 spots, with Los Angeles and San Francisco coming in at numbers seven and eight, respectively. California ranks so high because of the large number of colleges located there - college students are the highest age group for drunk driving.
• Charlotte, North Carolina, ranked third on the list of drunk driving cities.
• Texas had five spots in the top 20, with Austin at 9, and San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, and Ft. Worth holding spots 11 through 14.

Which cities are safer in terms of drunk driving? Most of the places in the top ten DUI offenders rely heavily on the driving culture, and offer relatively little in the way of public transportation, especially at night when people are more likely to be drinking heavily. Cities with active and well-used transportation systems, including cabs, buses and subways, have fewer DUIs - these cities' transportation options make it easy to avoid drunk driving.

A great way to reduce the number of drunk drivers out there is mandatory alcohol server training. These programs, enacted in a number of cities around the US have been shown to help reduce the impact of drinking and driving. Well trained alcohol servers are able to cut off intoxicated customers. They're constantly aware of their clientele, and are responsible in not serving alcohol to minors. In fact, certified bartenders are the first line of defense against drunk driving. To become a certified bartender visit www.aacea.com