Most people say it's wrong to drive under the influence, even if you're sure you can drive safely, according to a recent poll of York County residents.

But almost half say they've done it.

That behavior is one of the obstacles faced by those who are trying to prevent DUI. It's frustrating to hear that 45.4 percent of the poll respondents admit to driving while under the influence, said George Geisler, director of the Pennsylvania DUI Association's eastern office.

"No, it doesn't surprise me," he said. "It sickens me, but it doesn't surprise me."

Despite efforts to strengthen laws, ramp up enforcement and give police better training and tools to detect impairment, drunken driving is a continuing problem.

In 2006, for example, there were 57 fatal crashes in York County. About half were alcohol- or drug-related, virtually unchanged from the previous two years, according to a Daily Record/Sunday News analysis of the U.S. Department      of      Transportation's
Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

Nearly 90 percent of poll respondents said you shouldn't drive drunk even if you think you're OK to drive. But about 45 percent said they've driven drunk and were not arrested.

The poll was conducted for the York Daily Record/Sunday News by York College students working with the school's Institute of Applied Social Research. They surveyed 329 likely voters between Oct. 4 and 9, and the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.4 percent.

Experts say a couple of issues are likely at work here.

First, it's human nature for people to do things they know to be wrong. Secondly, some respondents might not have been completely honest; they were answering in a way they believed to be socially acceptable.

With most any harmful behavior -- overeating, alcoholism, drug addiction -- the majority of people acknowledge what they are doing is wrong, experts say.

"You know it's wrong, and you know it can possibly get you into trouble, yet you do it anyway," Sheila Sidney Bender, a New Jersey-based psychologist, said in an

e-mail. "It's not that you don't know, then it could be passed


off as ignorance, it's that you do know it and do it anyway."

The best ways to combat these bad behaviors aren't impressing upon people that it's wrong or that it's dangerous, because they likely already know it, said Simon A. Rego, a New York-based licensed clinical psychologist who focuses on behavioral therapy.

It's better to teach people how to avoid making compulsive mistakes, which is what he does as a cognitive therapist, Rego said. To change the behavior -- such as the number of people who drive drunk, for instance -- requires recognizing what triggers it, he said. And that requires critical thinking and self awareness before you are impaired, he said.

"It's not random," Rego said. "Certain social situations have more of a power to generate it."

In his experience, Pleasureville resident Curtis Smith said, many drunken drivers are young people who aren't thinking before acting. Smith, a respondent to the poll, said he believes drunken driving is wrong but probably has done so in the past.

"It goes along with every other mistake we deal with when we are younger," he said.

Smith, 49, said he's not often in a situation where he would be tempted to drink and drive. If he goes out, it's often just to dinner with his wife, and one of them takes responsibility to drive home.

As for the number of poll respondents who said they have driven drunk, Smith said that could be the result of the state lowering the level of intoxication at which an adult driver is considered to be drunk from 0.10 to 0.08 in 2007. He said the state was wrong in lowering the level.

"You can have dinner, a couple wines and be picked up at 0.08," Smith said.

For a variety of reasons, it's possible that more than 45.5 percent of the poll respondents have driven drunk without getting caught, said David Polk, a York College professor and the principal researcher for the poll.

Polk said his students expressed disbelief when he told them how many respondents said they had driven drunk. The students, he said, believed the number to be much higher.

"I think what is happening is people realize it is indeed wrong," he said.

A NEW TOOL

In York County, officers will soon have a new tool to detect drivers who are under the influence of drugs. A pupilometer was recently ordered by the York County Center for Traffic Safety, said George Geisler, director of the Pennsylvania DUI Association's eastern office.

The instrument, which is shaped roughly like a pair of binoculars, scans a driver's pupils, Geisler said. That image is then compared to a laptop database of 5 million pupils that are identified as being on drugs or fatigued, he said.

If the scan shows a match to intoxication, then the police officer can use that as probable cause to continue an investigation of the driver. If the driver is fatigued, which in and of itself is not against the law, the officer can use it to caution the driver.

DUI AND ARRESTS

Nationwide, nearly 1.4 million drivers were arrested in 2005 on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

By comparison, that's less than one percent of the 159 million self-reported episodes of drunken driving, according to a 2005 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.