On a Tuesday afternoon this summer, Madison police issued citations to a 73-year-old man who hit a construction worker with his car on the city’s north side. He failed field sobriety tests and had open intoxicants in the car, according to police records.
A month earlier, officers responded to a head-on crash on Whitney Way where a driver was in the wrong lane. The driver came from a restaurant where he’d been drinking. Police arrested him for operating a vehicle while impaired, the incident report said.
The two cases were among hundreds logged this year by the Madison Police Department as part of an increasing crackdown on impaired driving, already on track to outpace last year’s 595 arrests. Through June, the department reported making more than 440 arrests for operating a vehicle while impaired. That six-month total is more than the annual totals in 2020, 2021 and 2022, police figures show.
“The biggest impact that we see with these arrests is we're preventing further incidents,” said Madison Police Officer Korrie Rondorf, a spokesperson for the department.
The increased enforcement puts drivers on alert that police are stopping vehicles and doing field sobriety tests, she said. After reduced patrols during the initial years of the COVID-19 pandemic, police are ramping back up to pre-pandemic levels, Rondorf said.
“We have a lot more cops on the street and officers who have a lot more confidence and trying to do that proactive enforcement,” she said.
Wisconsin is home to the highest rate of alcohol-related driving deaths out of any of its Midwestern neighbors, based on an analysis by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. About 35% of driving deaths annually in Wisconsin are due to alcohol impairment. Dane County is worse off at 38%.
Wisconsin’s excessive drinking rates are higher than other states, too. Statewide and in Dane County, a quarter of adults report excessive or binge drinking, according to an analysis by the institute, which includes figures from 2017 to 2021.
In Madison, however, police are making more arrests this year for drugged driving, Rondorf said.
“As marijuana has become legalized, decriminalized, and therefore, just kind of tolerated a lot more across the country and in Wisconsin, we're finding many people are driving more so under the influence of cannabis rather than alcohol,” she said.
Recreational marijuana is legal in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois. In Wisconsin,a less potent form of THC, the chemical that gets people high, is legal.
TheWisconsin Department of Transportationreported over 7,700 crashes statewide involving drugs or alcohol last year. Nearly half of all traffic fatalities were due to impairment, according to the agency.
Police seek to reduce impaired driving
Amid Wisconsin’s higher rates of drunken driving deaths and excessive drinking are weaker penalties for impaired driving. Wisconsin is the only state where a person’s first offense is considered a traffic violation and results in no jail time, according to a 2023 article in the Marquette Law Review.
Policies could be implemented, statewide and locally, to deter impaired driving, said Maureen Busalacchi, director of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project at the Medical College of Wisconsin. For example, sobriety checkpoints would allow police to stop all vehicles in an area to check whether drivers are impaired.
“The thing about sobriety checkpoints is, yes, they catch people who are impaired,” Busalacchi said. “But the most important thing is that it's the communication to the public saying, ‘We’re going to be out, and we’re going to be looking for this, and you are going to be checked.’ And that's a really important message about the culture.”
Though checkpoints are illegalin Wisconsin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a large number of police officers patrolling an area can be effective at preventing impaired driving.
Madison leaders are anticipating a $22 million city budget shortfall next year, prompting Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to request all departments identify 5% in potential budget cuts.
The Madison Police Department’s proposal includes eliminating the daytime traffic safety and enforcement team as well as some patrol services and community policing teams, totaling $2.3 million for those cuts alone.
Rondorf, the department spokesperson, said the agency could use grant funding in the future to support impaired driving enforcement efforts if city funding is reduced.
Lawmakers expand access to alcohol
Busalacchi said Wisconsin and Madison have a high concentration of bars, restaurants and stores with liquor licenses compared to other states, and the density of retailers and alcohol access contributes to impaired driving.
State lawmakers passed sweeping regulation changes in 2023 allowing some alcohol sellers to stay open later and sell more products, among other changes.
Other efforts to increase penalties and preventions for drunken driving have repeatedly failed to become law.
Sen. Melissa Agard, D-Madison, co-authored a bill for the last two legislative sessions that would require ignition interlock devices for impaired driving offenders. Current law requires the devices on a second offense or if a person's blood alcohol content is above 0.15 for a first-time offender.
Ignition interlock devices require a driver to breathalyze themselves before driving and aim to prevent the car from being turned on if the driver is intoxicated. The CDC cites the devices as “highly effective” at preventing repeated impaired driving.
“This is one step that I believe that the Legislature needs to take that is part of many policies, and also cultural conversations, that we need to be having in Wisconsin,” Agard told the Cap Times.
The bill died in committee without getting a hearing from legislators.
Agard is not seeking reelection this fall, opting to run for Dane County executive. Agard said she's hopeful redrawn maps for legislative districts this year will create a less polarized Legislature and generate more across-the-aisle conversations to get legislation like the ignition devices passed.
