Sep 8, 2018 3 min read

This week (Sept. 10) in 1897, George Smith, a London cab driver, became the first person ever arrested for drunken driving after smashing his cab into a wall. He pleaded guilty and was fined 25 shillings, but had he hired a good lawyer he probably would have gotten off because at the time there was no way to prove he was drunk.

A decade later in America, the first laws against drunken driving were passed, but, again, there was no scientific method for proving drunken driving. Then, in 1936, Dr. Rolla Harger, a toxicology specialist, invented a “Drunkometer,” a balloon-like device requiring drunken-driving suspects to breathe into it. The balloon was then attached to a tube filled with a purple liquid (potassium permanganate and sulfuric acid), and as the balloon’s air – the suspect’s breath – was released into the tube, the alcohol in the breath would change the liquid’s color from purple to yellow. How fast the liquid’s color changed determined how drunk a suspect was.

Alas, the Drunkometer was not scientifically foolproof, as it required human calculation – essentially guesswork – to determine the alcohol level based on the speed of the liquid changing color. So, in 1953 a former Indiana policeman, Bob Borkenstein, developed the Breathalyzer, which was easier to administer and much more accurate. Like the Drunkometer, a person would blow into the Breathalyzer, but the Breathalyzer would scientifically determine the alcohol level. No human calculation required.

The Breathalyzer gave law enforcement a new weapon against drunken driving, but not until the early 1980s did the seriousness of the problem become known. That’s when Candace Lightner launched Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) after her teenage daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunken driver while walking home from school. The driver had three drunken-driving convictions and was out on bail for a hit-and-run arrest.

MADD became a powerful grassroots organization in the fight against drunken driving, lobbying that every state raise its drinking age to 21. In 1984, President Reagan signed a law withholding federal highway grants from states that failed to do so, and with some limited exceptions in certain states (drinking under parental supervision, for example), every state has done so. MADD also advocated that states lower from 0.15 percent to 0.08 percent the minimum blood-alcohol level designating drivers as criminally drunk, and fought for longer jail terms for drunken driving. MADD has also launched countless drunken-driving awareness campaigns.

It has been effective. Since MADD’s formation, drunken-driving deaths have nearly been cut in half, but according to MADD, on average, 10,100 people die in drunken-driving accidents every year, which is nearly 28 people per day. And, on average, 290,000 are injured in drunken-driving accidents every year, or nearly 800 a day.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net. Twitter: @BruceKauffmann