DWI in Durham County by the numbers: convictions, crashes and deaths

DWI convictions in Durham County

The NC Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission counts every DWI sentence imposed in the previous fiscal year, by county. Durham's count has fallen for two years running.

Durham's figure fell 33% over the two years, from 529 to 354, while the statewide total fell 14.5%. The FY2024 report says “DWI convictions decreased 10% from FY 2023 to FY 2024,” and the FY2025 report records a further 5% decrease. Durham's 416 convictions in FY2024 were 1.7% of the state's. The reports list Durham as District 14 in FY2023 and District 16 from FY2024 on, after the renumbering that took effect January 1, 2024.

The reports break sentences down by punishment level only statewide. In FY2025, of 23,407 convictions, 566 (2%) were Aggravated Level One, 2,043 (9%) Level One, 2,800 (12%) Level Two, 1,169 (5%) Level Three, 2,768 (12%) Level Four and 14,601 (60%) Level Five. Only “7% of DWI convictions resulted in an active sentence,” against 6% in FY2024 and FY2023. Readings split almost evenly, with 49% of convictions at 0.08 to 0.14 and 48% at 0.15 or more. The UNC School of Government's review of the FY2024 report adds that “94% of defendants were placed on probation,” that the share of convictions following a guilty plea rose “from 87% to 92%” between FY2020 and FY2024, and that 59% of convictions came within a year of the offense. What each level carries is on the penalties page; the most common level statewide is Level Five.

No county-level breakdown of levels, active sentences or readings exists in the SPAC reports; Appendix C is a single county table.

Alcohol-related crashes in Durham County, 2015–2024

NCDOT counts an alcohol-related crash as one the officer coded on the DMV-349 report as involving alcohol, whether or not impairment was suspected. Ten years of Durham County figures:

Definition: “reportable crashes that were coded on the DMV-349 as: 1 YES - Alcohol, Impairment Suspected, 2 YES - Alcohol, No Impairment Detected, 5 YES - Alcohol and other drugs, Impairment Suspected and 6 YES - Alcohol and other drugs, No Impairment Detected.” 2015–2019 from NCDOT's 2015–2020 county alcohol crash file; 2020–2024 from the 2024 Durham County Crash Profile, whose injured column here is persons injured in non-fatal crashes. The older county file shows 354 crashes for 2022 and 279 for 2020 where the 2024 profile shows 353 and 278; the difference is a later data cut, and this page uses the profile.

Over 2020 to 2024 the county recorded 1,583 alcohol-related crashes, 54 deaths and 1,190 people hurt or killed. The 2022 count of 353 was the high point; 2024's 312 was 11.6% below it. Alcohol-related crashes were 3.1% of the county's 10,004 reportable crashes in 2024. Ten-year deaths total 93.

Deaths and the share that were alcohol-related

In plain terms, about 1 in 4 Durham County crash deaths in 2024 and about 1 in 3 over the five years involved alcohol, against roughly 1 in 5 statewide in 2024. The county's 43 crash deaths in 2023 were its highest in the state's ten-year table; the 2014 to 2023 average was 31.

How Durham compares

NCDOT ranks all 100 counties on a set of crash measures, and two of Durham's ranks pull in opposite directions. On “Percent Alcohol Related Crashes” Durham scores 3% and ranks 99th of 100 for 2024 and for 2020–2024, one of the lowest alcohol shares in the state. On “Crashes Per 1000 Reg. Veh.” it scores 61.90 and ranks 1st on both measures, the highest in the state. The profile does not print which way rank 1 runs, but those two rows together show that rank 1 is the highest value. Durham's fatal crash rate of 0.91 per 100 million vehicle miles ranks 95th, its composite crash ranking was 47th in 2024 after three years at 51st, and it ranks 6th in population and 8th in registered vehicles. NCDOT says the composite “is based on several factors including reported crashes, crash severity, crash rates based on population, registered vehicles and estimated vehicle miles traveled.”

The Governor's Highway Safety Program's FY2026 grant application names Mecklenburg County “1st in alcohol-related fatalities,” with Guilford 3rd, Cumberland 4th, Forsyth 6th and Davidson 9th; Durham is not among the counties it lists. The same application funds a Durham County Sheriff's Office traffic enforcement grant and says “Durham County is ranked 8th in overall fatalities,” without stating the year. Where the stops happen, and which agency makes them, is on the highways page.

The City of Durham figures

NCDOT's annual Traffic Crash Facts reports break alcohol crashes out by city as well. The City of Durham is the police-reporting city, not the county, so its numbers run below the county's.

Alcohol-related crashes were 2.9% of the city's 8,355 crashes in 2024, and the 7 deaths were 25% of the city's 28 crash deaths; in 2023 the 11 alcohol-related deaths were 37% of 30. Over the four years the city recorded 1,001 alcohol-related crashes, 32 deaths and 736 injuries. For scale, Charlotte's 2024 row shows 778 alcohol-related crashes and 39 deaths.

Statewide context

North Carolina recorded 11,376 alcohol-related crashes in 2024, with 361 deaths and 7,227 injuries, per the 2024 Traffic Crash Facts; alcohol-related crashes were 4.0% of all crashes and 20.8% of all traffic deaths. The 2023 figures were 12,146 crashes, 377 deaths and 8,103 injuries; 2022's were 11,850, 448 and 7,728. Statewide traffic deaths from all causes were 1,732 in 2024. NCDOT's 2024 table of drivers with a recorded reading shows that of 5,766 crashes, 2,964 (51%) had a driver at .15 or above.

Federal numbers are counted differently. NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System counts a death as alcohol-impaired when a driver had a reading of .08 or higher, and it imputes a reading where none was tested. On that definition North Carolina had 449 alcohol-impaired-driving deaths in 2024, 28% of 1,619 traffic deaths, and 512 deaths (32%) involving any alcohol. Nationally there were 11,904 such deaths in 2024, 30% of all traffic deaths, one every 44 minutes. Because the definitions and even the total death counts differ (NCDOT's 1,732 against FARS's 1,619 for 2024), this page keeps the two frameworks apart.

Arrests are a third measure. The State Bureau of Investigation's Crime in North Carolina 2024 summary counts 14,649 DWI arrests reported by agencies statewide in 2024, down from 15,596 in 2023, of which 103 involved juveniles. That is far below the courts' 24,694 convictions for FY2024 because not every agency's arrests reach the SBI's reporting program; the two are not comparable, and the summary prints no Durham DWI arrest count. The Governor's Highway Safety Program's FY2024 report to NHTSA says the Booze It & Lose It campaigns “yielded 8,501 DWI arrests and 301,386 charges” with 87.4 percent of agencies taking part.

Campuses

Colleges report liquor-law arrests under the Clery Act, not DWI arrests, so campus figures are a proxy at most. NC Central's 2025 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report records 2 liquor-law arrests in 2024, 3 in 2023 and 7 in 2022, with 14, 23 and 30 liquor-law violations referred for discipline, and drug-law arrests of 25, 30 and 30. Duke's 2025 Annual Security Report was fetched for this guide, but its statistics tables could not be read, so no Duke number appears here. What an under-21 driver faces in Durham, on and off campus, is on the under-21 page.

What this guide could not find

A reporter or a reader should know the gaps as well as the numbers. None of the following exists in a form this guide could read, and none is stated anywhere on this site:

• Durham Police Department DWI arrests by year. The department's 2019 annual report says only that “officers also made numerous DWI arrests,” and its later quarterly and year-end reports carry no DWI total.
• Durham County Sheriff's Office or State Highway Patrol DWI arrests in Durham County by year.
• DWI charges filed in Durham County, as opposed to convictions. The AOC publishes county-level misdemeanor motor vehicle and civil license revocation activity reports as Excel workbooks that could not be opened.
• Durham County results for individual Booze It & Lose It campaigns, which NCDOT posts as Excel files.
• A county-level breakdown of punishment levels, active sentences or readings for Durham DWI defendants; the SPAC reports give those statewide only.
• Duke University's Clery liquor-law arrest counts.
• Any 2025 county crash figures; the newest NCDOT county profile is for 2024.

What a conviction costs, and how a case moves through the Durham courthouse, are covered elsewhere on this guide; this page is only the count.