The drunken driver: a psychosocial study.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to compare selected psychosocial variables of 306 convicted male drunk drivers with those of 294 alcoholics and 253 controls. The drunk driver group fell between the other groups on many parameters but resembled the alcoholic group on many others. While over 68% of the drunk drivers appeared to be alcoholics, in general they showed significantly less psychosocial incapacity than the alcoholic comparison group. The differences between the alcoholic and presumed non-alcoholic drunk drivers were not sufficient to clearly dichotomize the drunk driver group.