South Dakota Ranks Worst for DUI Arrests

It's alright to have a good time and throw back some drinks. It's not okay to drive home afterwards. In South Dakota, we do it more than anyone.

USDrugTestCenters.com released a study of drunk driving arrests in the United States. We ranked number one out of all fifty states for the drunkest driving arrests. In 2018 South Dakota had 721.9 DUI arrests per 100,000 people. The next closest was North Dakota with 678 per 100,000. Wyoming was right behind with 676 arrests.

Not only did South Dakota have the most in 2018, but we also ranked number one for the most years in the top ten in the ten years from 2009 to 2018. On the bright side, we saw a decline of 14 percent decline in arrests since 2009.

I wondered if perhaps the reason we had more was that we have fewer people and a fairly large amount of space to cover and that there were more officers per capita. That is probably not the case. In 2017 South Dakota had 882,000 people. We had one law enforcement officer to every 543 people. California, with 39.5 million people had one officer for every 506 people. Not a huge difference.

The bottom line, we drink and drive too much in South Dakota. Get a Lyft or a ride from an angry friend you woke up.