Don't Drink and Drive
San Antonio steers to the top of this dismal drunk driving ranking
Texas just received a very dubious honor: We are home to three cities with the most drunk-driving arrests in the nation between 2009-2018.
Not only is that more cities than any one state, says a study from SmartAdvocate using data from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer, but we can also lay claim to the overall No. 1 city. San Antonio had 77,357 drunk-driving arrests during that 10-year period — that's more than any other state's cities combined.
Houston lands at No. 6 with 58,064 arrests total, with Austin right behind it at No. 7 and 54,087 arrests. Los Angeles (72,156 arrests), Phoenix (72,013), New York (65,788), and Las Vegas (61,278) round out the top five.
It gets even worse if you break it down by arrests per 100,000 people. Then Texas secures four of the top 10 spots, with three in the top five.
Austin is second behind Las Vegas, with 5,804 arrests, followed by San Antonio with 5,181. El Paso claims fifth with 3,968 and Houston rounds out the top 10 with 2,529.
However, there is one title that the Lone Star State doesn't claim — the three highest amounts of drunk-driving arrests across individual years were all in Phoenix, Arizona, with a total of 31,803 arrests between 2009-2011.
But don't get too excited, because San Antonio comes in second with 27,121 arrests across the same three-year period. Let's try not to "win" this again next year, okay?