The new face of driving drunk

Amy Wells used to picture "an old, dirty man" whenever she tried to think of a typical drunken driver. But while impaired drivers in Minnesota are mostly men, they tend to be younger. And there's one group that's making up a growing percentage of drunken-driving arrests:

Women like Amy Wells.

Females made up 22 percent of drunken-driving arrests last year, up from 16.7 percent in 1990. Even people who work with impaired drivers every day aren't sure what's behind the increase.

The state's special year-end drunken-driving enforcement effort continues through New Year's Day, and if you're a holiday host who traditionally worries about whether Uncle Bill has had one too many, you might want to keep an eye on Aunt Jill, too.

The State Patrol says it hasn't made any special efforts to arrest women for impaired driving. In fact, a spokesman said that's because so many drunken drivers are pulled over during nighttime hours, troopers often know nothing about the person until running the license plate number or getting a closer look.

One theory is that there are simply more opportunities for women to drink. They're in the work force, they're going to happy hour, even some book clubs have wine flowing, says Sharon Gehrman-Driscoll, director of Minnesotans for Safe Driving.

Wells, who became an activist fighting drunken driving after her own arrest following a fatal wreck, cited ladies' nights at bars and her mother's recent invitation to a "Martinis and Manicures" event.

"The bars have more of a focus on females now," she said.

A record year

In 2006, Minnesota had a record number of drunken-driving arrests, nearly 42,000. Because the number of state troopers isn't going up, the arrests aren't likely to break that record this year, Department of Public Safety officials said.

Law enforcement officials know they're stopping only a small fraction of drunken drivers.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving said research shows that an impaired driver doesn't get pulled over until at least his or her 50th time -- and that figure is low, said Steve Simon, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who heads a state task force on drunken-driving laws.

Simon cited driver surveys showing that, in the 1990s, about one in 200 drivers on the road on a Saturday night was over the legal limit, an improvement over the one in 100 in the 1980s. Imagine Interstate 35W on a busy weekend, he said, then imagine the handful of troopers on hand for enforcement and "do the math."

Faison Sessoms, a Minneapolis attorney who specializes in defending those arrested for drunken driving, said about 30 percent of his clients are women. Higher arrest numbers are the result of lower legal blood-alcohol limits and stronger law enforcement, he said, not because men or women are drinking more.

"I'd say that women take it a lot harder than men do as far as being arrested," Sessoms said. "I tell them that it's not a mark on their character, but a mistake that they need to get over."

That's the perspective of Linda Pfeilsticker, 36, a legislative candidate from Wabasha who was arrested on Dec. 9 after driving into a ditch. Her blood-alcohol level tested at more than twice the legal limit, authorities said.

Pfeilsticker said her drunken-driving offense was a serious mistake and an "error in judgment," but that she doesn't intend to drastically change her life goals because of it. The DFLer is staying in the race against Republican Rep. Steve Drazkowski, also of Wabasha.

"You can let something like this kind of eat away at you and get in the way of doing good, positive things, or you can accept responsibility for it and build off of it and move on," she said.

Pfeilsticker isn't surprised that women are making up a higher percentage of drunken-driving arrests. "Part of it is probably just looking at more single women out there and the independence piece that comes along with that," she said.

On the town, on the road

Wells had a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 when she killed a man in a head-on collision after going out for St. Patrick's Day in 2000. She had followed the rules, to a point -- she rode to and from a bar with a non-drinking friend, then got in her car to attempt the remaining few miles home.

Wells, who was giving three or four talks about drunken driving a month before her son was born this past summer, knows her message reaches some females. A high school girl from Edina once wrote Wells to tell her that Wells' talk had inspired her to take away the keys of her best friend, who was too drunk to drive. The friend called her all sorts of names, she said, but the next day was grateful. Wells said the girl wrote that "I didn't want her to turn into you."

Gehrman-Driscoll had wanted Wells to tell her story at the Shakopee women's prison, but Wells said she's prohibited from entering the facility while she's on her 10-year probation.

Hearing the stories

On the Wednesday before Christmas, the meeting room in the basement of the Hennepin County Government Center was dressed up for the holidays with red bows, a few plastic wreaths, a tabletop tree and several poinsettias that hadn't been getting much light. The decorations did little to lighten the mood when about 40 repeat drunken-driving offenders gathered to hear a driver-impact panel.

Gehrman-Driscoll started organizing these panels in 1989, and she remembers the first one had seven people in attendance, all males. On this night, there were eight or nine women in the crowd.

One of the speakers was Nicole Gebeck, who was convicted of vehicular homicide and was one of Wells' workhouse roommates. Gebeck talked of what it was like to be a single mother in jail, having to watch her two daughters be searched by guards before being allowed a 45-minute weekly visit.

After Gebeck spoke, Jon Cummings, who founded Minnesotans for Safe Driving, told the story of how his son was hit by a drunken driver in 1994. He said that he's often asked how he can be friends with people such as Gebeck and Wells. Cummings says that when he was younger, he might have gotten himself into the same situation.

"I have nightmares about some of the close calls I had," he said. "The only difference between me and them is I got smart before my luck ran out."

Wells said that, in her experience, women "tend to think that somebody else is going to take care of them when they get drunk." "'Oh, my friends will take care of me or oh, this cute guy will make sure I get home,'" she said, expressing some dismay. "I know a lot of girls that are like that."