Opinion ID: 1712936
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Evidence in the Present Case

Text: At the trial of the motion to quash, the State introduced the record of the Manuel case [5] and three additional witnesses, along with supporting documents. Defendants introduced one witness and supporting documents. The 1997 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Report found an over-involvement of persons eighteen to twenty years of age in traffic accidents. Alcohol-related traffic fatality rates, based on the percentage of licensed drivers in each age group, were over twice as high in the disadvantaged group as the rates for persons twenty-one and over. Moreover, more persons in the disadvantaged group died in 1997 in 0.01 to 0.09 percent BAC crashes than did persons in any other contiguous age group. In Louisiana, the statistics generally showed equal or greater representation in fatal crashes and in alcohol-related fatal crashes, especially in low BAC fatal crashes. Richard Compton, NHTSA senior research psychologist and technical advisor who conducted research and evaluation studies in highway safety, analyzed national studies of alcohol-related crashes based on population, number of licensed drivers, and number of vehicle miles traveled. He opined: [T]here is no question that 18 to 20 year olds have a higher rate of involvement in alcohol-related crashes. They represent a group that is inexperienced at drinking and inexperienced at driving and the combination has proven to be quite deadly. They get in more crashes when drinking than people at a higher age. That is the basis [sic] justification for having a lower BAC limit. Compton concluded with the observation that [a]lcohol leads to elevated crash risk and it does so at a higher rate for those under 21. Dr. Helmut Schneider, a statistics professor and a consultant for the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission (LHSC), compiled and analyzed traffic records data for the LHSC from 1994 to 1997. He confirmed that drivers between eighteen and twenty years of age are significantly over-represented in alcohol-related fatal crashes and even more so in alcohol-related fatal crashes with low BAC percentages. He verified that the risk of alcohol-related crashes is higher, at the same BAC levels, for those who are younger than twenty-one than for older drivers. Although eighteen-to-twenty-year-old drivers represent only five percent of licensed drivers, they were responsible for twenty-three percent of low level alcohol-related Louisiana fatalities in 1997 and nearly ten percent of all alcohol-related crashes. He further demonstrated, on a chart of low BAC crashes by single age groups, that the high crash rate peaks at age twenty and then declines quickly after that age group. Dr. Richard Scribner, a physician who qualified as an expert in preventive medicine and prevention of alcohol-related problems, compiled crash data from 1986 through 1993. He concluded from that data that eighteen-to-twenty-year-old drivers presented the highest risk of alcohol-related fatal crashes and injury crashes in Louisiana. [6] He added that the laws raising the minimum drinking age had been the most widely studied preventive intervention in his field of expertise and have constituted one of the most successful projects. Defendant presented a witness who had compiled the number of DWI arrests prosecuted to convictions in district court in Evangeline Parish from 1989 through 1997, and in Ville Platte City Court from 1994 until 1999. These figures showed that the eighteen-to-twenty-year-old drivers were not the group with the greatest amount of DWI convictions. Regarding this evidence of DWI convictions in one parish, Compton asserted that the total number of DWI arrests and convictions for a particular age group is not the proper measure for determining the risk presented by that age group of being involved in an alcohol-related crash. According to Compton, DWI arrests merely indicate who the police are catching and thus represent a random sampling of drinking drivers, rather than an actual count of drinking drivers who cause injury or death. Dr. Schneider further stated that the DWI figures (if assumed to be applicable statewide), combined with the statistics used by him, might show there are not many 17 to 20 year olds driving under the influence of alcohol, but they crash a lot when they have alcohol. He added that crash data represent a count of total crashes, while DWI convictions are a sampling and are useless, in the field of statistics, in determining the risk of traffic crashes presented by the population of drivers who are drinking.