The city with the most drunk-driving arrests in America from 2009-18 was San Antonio, Texas. With 77,357 drunk-driving arrests from 2009-18, San Antonio “won” the top spot. Using data from the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, we took a closer look at 30 of the most populated cities in the country and their amounts of drunk-driving arrests over the past decade. Here are the cities with the most drunk-driving arrests in America per capita from 2009-18.
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Which Cities Have Had the Most Drunk-Driving Arrests in the United States Over the Past Ten Years?
Based on the data from 2009-18, these were the ten cities with the most drunk-driving arrests out of the 30 most populated cities:
- San Antonio, Texas: 77,357
- Los Angeles, California: 72,156
- Phoenix, Arizona: 72,013
- New York, New York: 65,788
- Las Vegas, Nevada: 61,278
- Houston, Texas: 58,064
- Austin, Texas: 54,087
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 41,098
- Chicago, Illinois: 30,452
- San Diego, California: 28,389
Of the ten cities with the most drunk-driving arrests, three of them are in Texas, which is more than any other state. San Antonio has more than any other state, period!
Four of the top ten cities with the highest amounts of drunk-driving arrests per 100,000 people (2009-18) were also in Texas, including three of the top five. Here’s the top ten:
- Las Vegas, Nevada: 9,824
- Austin, Texas: 5,804
- San Antonio, Texas: 5,181
- Phoenix, Arizona: 4,607
- El Paso, Texas: 3,968
- Nashville, Tennessee: 3,417
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: 2,741
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 2,622
- Denver, Colorado: 2,616
- Houston, Texas: 2,529
Three of the top five cities here are in Texas.
The three highest amounts of drunk-driving arrests across individual years were all in Phoenix, Arizona:
- 2009: 10,594
- 2010: 10,763
- 2011: 10,446
Over the span of just three years, there were a total of 31,803 arrests related to drunk driving in Phoenix alone! San Antonio wasn’t too far behind, as that city saw 27,121 across the same three-year period.
Other Notable Findings
- The highest amount of drunk-driving arrests over a five-year span was in Phoenix, Arizona, with 49,246 from 2009-13. Each year saw an average of 9,849.2 arrests.
- The largest drop in the amount of drunk-driving arrests from one year to the next was also in Phoenix, Arizona, which saw a 60.3% decrease from 2015 to 2016, going from 7,201 arrests to just 2,859. Phoenix’s average dropped after that, falling to 2,994 a year from 2016-18.
How did your city do on this list?