The offenders in this study had a much higher prevalence of impaired driving at follow-up, compared with a general population sample of drivers. Ten percent of offenders admitted to DOL in the past 3 months. For comparison, only 2.3% of civilian adults over age 18 responded positively to the 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System question, “During the past month, how many times have you driven when you’ve had perhaps too much to drink?”43 The questions are not comparable, due to different wording and the different time interval covered in the two questions, but the questions similarly require the respondent to make a subjective judgment about their level of intoxication. In the 2001–2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions,44 subjects were asked, “In your entire life, did you ever more than once drive a car or other vehicle while you were drinking?” If yes, they were asked if this happened in the past 12 months. In that survey, the 12-month prevalence was 4.5%. The overall male to female ratio was around 3.0, in stark contrast to our findings of similar rates between genders, 12% of males and 9% of females having reported DOL in the past 3 months.
