To be able to terrorize the roads as a drunk driver, you need to be able to afford both a vehicle and booze, and those things aren’t so easy to come by when jobs are so scarce. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a survey finds that impaired driving is down 30 percent since the boom times of 2006.

From phone survey statistics, the CDC estimated that 4 million Americans reported at least one instance of drunk driving, causing a total of 112 million drunk-driving episodes.

The CDC can’t pinpoint the cause of the decrease, but its director speculated that more people are drinking at home and thus not driving around drunk as much.

The organization recommends more sobriety checkpoints, higher alcohol taxes and stricter laws for bars to further reduce the numbers.

Tough economy may be keeping more drunks off roads [CDC via Reuters]

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