Sunday, December 02, 2007 | News
The City: A safer place to raise your kids

UGA study shows rural middle school students more likely to drink and drive

By Colby Dunn

Homework, bullying, bad P.E. uniforms, drunk driving—which one of these things is not like the others? Of all the problems that plague middle-schoolers, most would assume that drunk driving is not among them. But according to a study done by researchers at the University of Georgia, that assumption might be wrong.

This month in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention, UGA researchers reported that of about 300 students polled in a rural Mississippi middle school, 17 percent admitted to drinking and driving, and an astronomical 45 percent owned up to riding with a drinking driver—numbers that practically dwarf nationwide statistics for high school students. Only about 10 percent of high school students cop to drinking and driving, and 30 percent admit to riding with drunk drivers.

“We were surprised,” says Jessica Muilenburg, professor of health promotions at UGA and lead author of the study. “I don't think that we normally think of kids who don’t have a license as driving.”

But being old enough to have a license, especially in the rural South, is not always a prerequisite for driving.

“In rural areas, they tend to be more familiar with motorized vehicles,” Muilenburg says of the students, many of whom have been riding tractors and ATVs since childhood and are more able to swipe the family car or truck for a ride on back roads, where chances of getting caught are pretty low.

“IF YOU’RE DOING ONE, YOU’RE PROBABLY DOING MORE”

Even if they are driving, is it really true that kids as young as 12 could be making the very adult mistake of sliding behind the wheel when they’re wasted? It’s certainly plausible, Muilenburg says. In 2005, the American Journal of Public Health reported that 17 percent of eighth graders nationwide said they’d actually gone binge-drinking in the past year—not just stealing one beer from dad’s fridge—and almost 75 percent said they’d had more than one drink at a time in their young lives. So is it really such a leap to think that if kids are drinking illegally, they’d be driving illegally too?

“We know from other studies that if you're doing one, you’re probably doing more,” Muilenburg says of such risk behaviors.

Stuart Usdan, a health science professor at the University of Alabama and an expert on college drinking issues who helped co-author the study, echoes those sentiments.

“A lot of them are driving underage anyway,” he says. “They’re driving when they shouldn’t, drinking when they certainly shouldn’t and then combining them.”

This layering of risky illegal habits has sharply increased in rural areas like those that make up most of Georgia, as opposed to urban areas like Atlanta.

“We know that there’s a higher prevalence of substance use and risky behavior in rural areas,” says Muilenburg.

And the facts back her up. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse has reported that rural kids are more likely to use crack cocaine, smoke marijuana, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes than their urban compatriots. And when you mix those behaviors with the pre-license driving that’s pretty regular for rural kids, tragedy is inevitable. Research shows that crashes involving 7- to14-year-old drivers were responsible for 436 deaths in the four-year span from 1996-2000.

UNCOVERING THE PROBLEM

But if this behavior is so pervasive, especially in rural areas, why are these results so surprising? Usdan says that the big problem is access—i.e., uncovering the problem.

“It's a very hard-to-get-at issue. You don’t really get access until they get caught, which is very low base rate in comparison [to those actually drinking and driving],” he says, explaining that the number that gets caught is only a portion of those who actually drink and drive. “It's hard to catch a 14-year-old driving a car, let alone a 14-year-old who is driving impaired.”

Usdan also notes that even if you can survey kids, they’re not always guaranteed to tell the truth, especially if parents or teachers are around. But researchers like Muilenburg are trying to deepen the research so they can work toward solutions for this growing problem.

“We need to take a greater look at this as a society and why are these things occurring,” she says. “That's why I’m trying to find ways to study this.”

What, then, can be done today? Usdan and Muilenburg both suggest more parental involvement—or at the very least, societal acknowledgement of what seems to be becoming the elephant in the room.

“In a general sense, parents need to be more aware,” she says. “Maybe just understanding that their kids may be doing things that they might not expect them to do. There has to be some type of acknowledgement, by parents, lawmakers and especially by society.”

Usdan agrees.

“It's hard to control these kinds of behaviors with very young people,” he says, which is clear to most parents with a middle-schooler. "So get parents and other positive role models involved in a positive way earlier.” SP

The kids aren’t all right

Of about 300 students polled in a rural Mississippi middle school, 17 percent admitted to drinking and driving.

In 2005, the American Journal of Public Health reported that nationwide, 17 percent of eighth graders said they’d actually gone binge drinking in the past year, and almost 75 percent said they’d had more than one drink at a time.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse reports that rural kids are more likely to use crack cocaine, smoke marijuana, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes than their urban compatriots.

Crashes involving drivers between the ages of 7 and 14 were responsible for 436 deaths in the four-year span from 1996-2000.