Campaign targets drunken driving

The effort aims to educate Hispanics about the dangers and the state's laws

Drunken driving is the leading cause of death among Hispanics in North Carolina, according to El Pueblo, a nonprofit advocacy group for Latinos.

That's why the group has teamed up with the Governor's Highway Safety Program and the state Highway Patrol on a multi-pronged campaign to determine the best way to address high rates of drunken driving in the state's Hispanic community.

In the Triangle, increased enforcement of DWI laws will complement an ad campaign designed to educate Hispanics about the dangers of drinking and driving, said Tony Asion, director of public safety for the organization.

The campaign's slogan: "Manejar Borracho? No Seas Tonto Muchacho!" which translates to "Drive Drunk? Don't be a Fool Man!"

El Pueblo has begun to introduce different strategies of education and enforcement in three areas of the state to gauge their effectiveness.

The project's Triangle component will involve more traffic checkpoints targeting drunken drivers, increased distribution of pamphlets to Hispanics and a series of TV, radio and print ads in Hispanic media on how drunken driving can affect families. Efforts in the Triad will just include the education component, and the project will only monitor DWI statistics in the Charlotte area.

Researchers will conduct surveys of the Hispanic community in all three areas to test the effectiveness of both education for Hispanics and highly visible enforcement of DWI laws.

Hispanics received 19 percent of DWI charges in 2005, even though they account for only 7 percent of the state's population, according to the state's Administrative Office of the Courts.

Asion said drunken driving is more common in the Hispanic community because the bulk of the state's Hispanics are young men who live alone -- a demographic prone to drinking and driving.

He also attributed the numbers to a lack of understanding of the state's DWI laws and a "machismo" attitude that discourages Hispanic men from admitting they are too drunk to drive.

"We have to change that mindset," Asion said.

Efforts to curb drunken driving among Latinos have had mild success: the percentage of alcohol-related crashes involving Latinos in North Carolina has dropped from 9.2 percent in 2000 to 7.6 percent in 2004.

But drunken driving among Hispanics is still a huge problem, Asion said.

Programs like this can't do much to stop people from drinking and driving unless they receive much more funding, said Rob Foss, senior research scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center.

"If you're talking about trying to move around the behavior of several hundred thousand people, that's just peanuts," Foss said, referring to the project's relatively small budget of about $250,000.

Still, El Pueblo hopes to cut drunken driving fatalities in the Hispanic community by 25 percent by the end of the 30-month project, Asion said.

"We feel it is our responsibility to educate and to curtail these numbers," he said.