Many Designated Drivers Have Already Had A Drink Or Two

New Year’s Eve revelers who plan to celebrate with alcohol are increasingly using designated drivers, but watch out - social scientists say those behind the wheel may have been imbibing, too.

Many people don’t mean to put themselves and others at risk by placing an inebriated driver behind the wheel, but it can happen when they don’t plan.

Surveys show people frequently wait until they have slugged a few drinks with friends before deciding who will be the driver, said James Lange, a psychologist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, a not-for-profit organization in Calverton, Md., that does research for federal and state agencies.

“We find that a lot of times people choose a designated driver who seems to be least drunk of the group,” Lange said. “It’s drunk people making the determination of who is the least drunk. It’s subject to error.”

Robert Voas, another psychologist at the Pacific Institute, said a high proportion of people stopped in roadside surveys who say they are designated drivers “are not drunk, but have been drinking.”

Voas said the most effective way to use a designated driver is to establish “whoever is going to drive isn’t going to drink.”

To dissuade patrons from drinking and driving, bars and restaurants often offer free soft drinks and appetizers for designated drivers who stay sober. And some police departments, working in conjunction with taxi services, offer rides home to merrymakers who have had too much.

These efforts, along with other anti-drunken driving campaigns, have been credited with a slight drop in alcohol-related traffic fatalities from 1998 to 1999. The death toll fell from 16,020 to 15,786, or 1 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Barry Caudill, director of the Center for Studies on Alcohol at Westat, a company in Rockville, Md., said his research shows “a huge amount of drunken driving has been prevented by the use of designated drivers.”

In a 1999 survey of 364 bar patrons in Frederick, Md., Caudill found that 73 percent of heavy drinkers said they had used a sober designated driver an average of nine times in the past year.

Also in the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, 95 percent of heavy drinkers said they did something to avoid driving drunk an average of 27 times in the previous year. That might mean taking a cab, walking home or staying overnight to avoid driving while intoxicated.

However, Caudill said there is still cause for concern because of the drinkers he surveyed drove while intoxicated one-third of the time.

“We’ve still got to change people’s attitudes,” he said.