The states with the most DUIs look different depending on how you count. By raw alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, Texas leads the country with 1,699 deaths in 2023, followed by California at 1,355 and Florida at 839. By the share of all traffic deaths involving an impaired driver, Hawaii tops the list at 42 percent, Texas at 40 percent, and South Carolina at 39 percent. By DUI arrests per capita, the leaders are South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Each metric answers a slightly different question, so the right ranking depends on what you actually want to know.
Raw Fatality Counts: The Biggest States Dominate
The simplest measure is total alcohol-impaired driving deaths. In 2023, 12,429 people died nationwide in crashes where at least one driver had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent or higher, which worked out to 30 percent of all U.S. traffic deaths.1National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. State Alcohol-Impaired-Driving Estimates: 2023 Data
The three states with the highest totals were:
- Texas: 1,699 alcohol-impaired fatalities
- California: 1,355
- Florida: 839
These are also the three most populous states, so the raw numbers reflect the sheer volume of driving as much as anything local. A state with 30 million residents will almost always record more impaired-driving deaths than one with 3 million, regardless of what people are doing behind the wheel.
Share of Traffic Deaths: Where Impaired Driving Is Most Prevalent
A more informative measure is the percentage of a state’s total traffic fatalities that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This controls for population and driving volume and gets closer to how dangerous the roads actually are in each state. The national figure in 2023 was 30 percent.
States consistently above that average include:
- Hawaii at 42 percent, the highest in the country despite only 93 total traffic fatalities
- Texas at 40 percent, which also tops the raw-count ranking
- South Carolina at 39 percent, with 413 alcohol-impaired fatalities out of 1,047 total
- Connecticut and Iowa at 37 percent each
- Ohio at 37 percent, with 455 alcohol-impaired fatalities
At the bottom of the list, Utah and Mississippi tied at 21 percent.1National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. State Alcohol-Impaired-Driving Estimates: 2023 Data Utah is the only state with a legal BAC limit of 0.05 percent rather than the standard 0.08, and its low ranking has held steady since the stricter limit took effect.
Texas is the one state that lands near the top on both the raw-count and percentage measures, which makes it the most troubling by almost any reading of the data.
Per Capita Arrests: Rural States Lead
DUI arrest rates per 100,000 residents produce a third ranking that looks almost nothing like the first two. The leaders here are small, rural states:
- South Dakota: roughly 1,029 alcohol-related arrests per 100,000 residents
- North Dakota: 899 per 100,000, about 173 percent above the national average
- Wyoming: 727 per 100,000
Total arrests in these states are modest in absolute terms, but spread across small populations they translate into very high per capita rates. The ranking says as much about geography and enforcement patterns as it does about drinking behavior.
Why the Rankings Differ So Much
No single factor explains why Mississippi comes in at 21 percent of fatalities and Hawaii at 42, or why South Dakota logs ten times the per capita arrests of some coastal states. Several forces push the numbers in different directions.
Rural Distance and Limited Alternatives
States with large rural areas and little public transit consistently show higher DUI arrest rates. When the nearest bar sits 20 miles from home and there is no bus, taxi, or rideshare operating nearby, impaired people are more likely to get behind the wheel. South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming all fit that profile. NHTSA data also shows that rural drivers with prior impaired-driving convictions are more likely to be impaired again when involved in fatal crashes than their urban counterparts.2National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Rural/Urban Comparison: 2016 Data
Tourism and Drinking Culture
Hawaii’s position at the top of the fatality-percentage list likely reflects its tourism economy, where visitors drink heavily on vacation and drive on unfamiliar roads. Nevada and Louisiana see similar dynamics in parts of the state. Cultural attitudes toward binge drinking, particularly in parts of the upper Midwest and Plains, also show up in the numbers.
Demographics
Young men between 21 and 34 are consistently overrepresented in alcohol-related crashes. States with a higher share of that demographic, including those with military bases, college towns, or oil-field employment, tend to see elevated rates. North Dakota’s oil boom brought a wave of younger male workers into the state, which helps explain arrest rates far above the national average.
How Enforcement and Reporting Shape the Numbers
A state’s DUI numbers reflect not just how many people drive drunk but how aggressively police look for them and how reliably agencies report the data.
Checkpoints and Patrol Strategy
Twelve states either prohibit sobriety checkpoints or choose not to conduct them, including Texas, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Some base the prohibition on state constitutional protections; others simply never authorized the practice. States that run checkpoints generate more arrests per enforcement dollar, which inflates their arrest totals compared to states that rely on patrol-based detection alone. Comparing raw arrest counts across states without accounting for enforcement strategy produces a misleading picture.
Gaps in Crime Reporting
The FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System is the national standard for crime data, but participation remains incomplete. As of the end of 2024, roughly 76 percent of law enforcement agencies covering about 87 percent of the population reported NIBRS data.3Congress.gov. Federal Support for Law Enforcement Agencies’ Transition to NIBRS The gaps are not random. Smaller rural agencies lag more often, which means the areas with the highest per capita DUI activity may be underrepresented in national arrest datasets.
Fatality figures hold up better across state lines because NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System pulls from police reports, death certificates, toxicology results, and state records rather than depending on voluntary agency reporting.4National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fatality Analysis Reporting System That is why the share-of-fatalities ranking is more defensible for state comparisons than arrest-based rankings.
A Note on Drug-Impaired Driving
The rankings above cover alcohol-impaired driving specifically. Drug-impaired driving is a growing share of the overall problem, with 56 percent of drivers involved in serious-injury and fatal crashes who were tested coming back positive for at least one drug.5National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Drug-Impaired Driving State-by-state comparisons on drugs are harder because only five states have set specific per se limits for THC, with thresholds between 2 and 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood.6National Conference of State Legislatures. Drugged Driving – Marijuana-Impaired Driving Most states still require prosecutors to prove actual impairment through officer observations and expert evaluations, so arrest and conviction data for drug-impaired driving is far less consistent across state lines than alcohol data.
Which Ranking Should You Trust?
If the question is where impaired driving causes the most total damage, Texas, California, and Florida lead because they are the largest states. If the question is where you are most likely to encounter an impaired driver as a share of all traffic, Hawaii, Texas, and South Carolina top the list. If the question is where police are catching the most drunk drivers relative to population, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming lead, though that ranking is shaped heavily by enforcement choices and reporting completeness. Texas is the only state that lands near the top on more than one measure, which makes it the clearest answer when the question is simply which state has the most DUIs.