Predictors of Driving While Intoxicated among Teenagers

Abstract

Youthful driving while intoxicated (DWI) is a leading cause of death among teenagers and young adults. In spite of great social concern about teenagers and DWI, definitive studies are lacking which characterize youth who are at a high risk for this problem behavior. The present study uses a large representative sample of over 11,000 New York State secondary school students aged 16 years and older. The relationships between DWI, alcohol use, other drug use and numerous social factors are explored using multivariate analysis. Driving while intoxicated is found to be a prevalent problem, occurring among almost a quarter of the high school students in the past year. DWI is strongly related to various sociodemographic factors such as age, sex, ethnicity and geographic region. Furthermore, DWI is found to be part of a complex network of adolescent problem behaviors including other alcohol-related problems, illicit drug abuse and school misconduct.