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MADD claims:

In 2020, there was an average of 347,000 drunk driving episodes each day.

National Highway Safety Traffic Administration

https://madd.org/statistic_type/drunk-driving/

They cite the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration, with a link to this page. I can't find a version of that stat on current or former versions of the page, but it's possible I missed one.

Is this stat true?

I found another version of it:

Drunk driving is as prevalent as it is lethal. According to the US Department of Transportation, nearly 4 million American adults committed an estimated 112 million drunk-driving incidents in 2010 alone. Despite the high volume of drunk driving episodes, only a small percentage of impaired drivers are arrested. There are almost 300,000 drunk driving incidents in America each day. Arrests are made in only 0.013% of these cases.

https://www.addictioncenter.com/alcohol/drunk-driving/

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    Just to add a bit of context regarding the order of magnitude of this number, that's approximately one in 1,000 Americans, which sounds believable for the number of people who drive after "having had perhaps too much to drink" on a given day. There are 340 million people in the U.S. Commented Mar 3 at 18:24
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    Are you skeptical because you believe it to be much lower or to be much higher? Commented Mar 4 at 9:34
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    I'm skeptical because it was put out by an advocacy group with a phantom citation. And when I Googled it I found no good sources. I also believed it to be lower but that appears to be misplaced. Commented Mar 4 at 15:19
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    To add to @reirab's contextualization - this means the average American drives drunk about once every three years. Commented Mar 4 at 19:38

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The following article looked at this question:

They used a survey to ask nearly half a million people how many times they drove in the previous month "when you have had perhaps too much to drink" every couple of years.

In 2018 (not 2020), they estimated 146,591,009 incidents in the year [See table 3], which corresponds to an average of 401K incidents per day.

Compare that to their estimates of 304K incidents per day in 2014, and 508K incidents per day in 2016.

The MADD estimate and Addiction Center estimates (for 2020) are at the lower end of those ranges, and are unlikely to be gross exaggerations (assuming that was the original concern).

[Aside: I suspect this 2023 paper would shine more light on the situation, but I unfortunately find myself without access to the contents of the paper - I hope someone else can comment.]

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    @JiminyCricket.: Thanks! Turned out not to be useful as it only looked at youths. Commented Mar 2 at 8:06
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    Note this counts all drink driving events, not events with consequences, or events that were illegal. Of course drink driving has a certain percentage of bad consequences, so reducing the number would be helpful. Commented Mar 2 at 13:52
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    @gnasher729: Yes, this isn't counting "how many drunk-driving accidents" or "how many DUI convictions". It is counting how many times people (claim to) drive with "perhaps too much to drink". That is consistent with my original reading of the claim by MADD etc, so I didn't find it misleading at all. Did you read the original claim differently? Commented Mar 2 at 14:17
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    I think the original claim by MADD is slightly misleading. However, "perhaps too much to drink" could average out to more than the true % of people who drove with a BAC of 0.08. It could also average out to less. The question could get yes answers from people who drove within the legal and practical limit, but it might also encourage "yes" answers from problem drunk-drivers who might lie on a harsher question. Commented Mar 2 at 19:27
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    Interesting statistics about the high number of incidents but comparatively low number of drivers involved. The ~2% of respondents who admitted to driving after having perhaps too much did so, on average, about 35 times per year. Commented Mar 3 at 14:57
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True according to the CDC

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System ("the largest continuously conducted health survey system in the world") asked "During the past 30 days, how many times have you driven when you've had perhaps too much to drink?", which was summed and multiplied by 12 to create a number estimating the annual number of drunk driving episodes in the US. In 2020, they estimated 127 million, and 127,000,000 naïvely divided by 366 (days) is 347,000 per day, almost on the nose. However, it would be better to divide by 360 (=12*30), matching the math to get the annual number, which gets approximately 353,000.

See Impaired Driving Facts.

yearly episodes, starting with 123 mil in 1993 and ending with 127 mil in 2020

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    Since these are very fuzzy estimates, and "perhaps too much to drink" is a very vague and subjective criteria, I don't think the math precision makes that much difference. These are all just ballpark numbers and the general trend is what's important. Commented Mar 3 at 16:28
  • @Barmar While it must be within the error margin, there's no justification for calculating it in a way that introduces more error. If it's a 30-day estimate, you divide that by 30, not 30.5. Commented Mar 5 at 18:16

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