Region authorities are struggling to get ahead of drunken drivers who are causing a higher percentage of fatal road crashes in Northwest Indiana than the rest of the state and nation.
It's not a race police, prosecutors, judges and mental health officials are winning, a Times investigation of fatal road crashes in the Region shows.
From 2010 to 2014, drunken driving was linked to 35.1 percent of the deadly crashes in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties, compared to 27.9 percent nationally and 25.1 percent statewide, according to a Times computer-assisted probe of federal road fatality data.
LaPorte County had the highest percentage of fatal accidents linked to drunken driving in that time span, at 39.2 percent, followed by Lake County at 35.5 percent and Porter County at 29.5 percent.
Why Northwest Indiana?
In the five-year period The Times analyzed, 140 people were killed in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties in drunken driving-related wrecks.
So what Region circumstances could be leading to these tragedies?
Region health and public safety experts said some answers may come from the data pertaining to drinking behavior — and the way we seek to treat those behaviors.
In 2016, the percentage of adults reporting binge or heavy drinking in Northwest Indiana was 17 percent in Lake County, 20 percent in Porter County and 19 percent in LaPorte County, according to data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The state average was 19 percent, while the top 10th of counties in the entire country averaged 13 percent.
But Bob Krumwied, president and CEO of Merrillville-based Regional Mental Health Center, said with all the focus on the opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse often is overlooked. He estimated that about two-thirds of the people his agency treats for drug addiction also suffer from alcoholism.
A 2017 study in the journal "Psychiatry" found alcohol use in the United States rose significantly between 2002 and 2013, with the researchers deeming it a "public health crisis."
Help with substance abuse can sometimes be difficult to access in the Region and state as a whole. Indiana ranks ninth-worst for the number of adults who need but don't receive treatment, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Krumwied said there's a greater lack of treatment for adolescents.
As for why there are so many fatal accidents related to alcohol, Krumwied said, "Part of it's just the area we live in and just the high congestion and the two interstates. It's a terrible place to be if you're not an intoxicated driver. It's a death trap if you are one."
"Really it's because of the roads we have and the amount of traffic that goes through our three counties," Porter County Sheriff David Reynolds agreed. "(Interstate) 94 is one of the busiest roads in the country, and it goes through our three counties."
Lt. Steven Trajkovich, head of traffic investigations for the Lake County sheriff's office, also believes the heavy traffic in Northwest Indiana plays a role, as does the weather.
"You can have one day where it's sunny and beautiful, and the next day you have a rainstorm or ice storm. People aren't prepared for that," he said. "When you mix bad weather with drunk driving, obviously that's not a good combination."
However, the Region's fatal accident data don't show weather to be a main factor.
Of the 131 drunken-driving-related fatal crashes, 97 accidents, or 74 percent, occurred on clear days with clean roads, The Times probe shows.
Of the remaining crashes, 21 occurred on cloudy days, eight on rainy days, four during sleet, snow or hail and one during fog.
Trajkovich also said Region police agencies put less of an emphasis on enforcing drunken driving laws, pursuing grants less aggressively than their counterparts in other parts of the state, namely central and southern Indiana.
"Up here, they're more focused on the drugs and the guns, and traffic crimes kind of take a backseat to those in Northwest Indiana. They think those (other) crimes are sexier," he said.
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