Is there a typical person that commits a DUI?

Richard Huttner says, “No.  It can happen to anybody.”

A first offense is usually a younger individual who makes a poor choice. They know they shouldn’t be driving. They have good intention of using a designated driver and the plan fails somewhere. Either the designated driver gets drunk and there isn’t a designated driver, or there’s a fight between people and the designated driver isn’t available, so the person – not thinking clearly – makes the poor choice of driving after consuming alcohol. They oftentimes know that they shouldn’t be on the road. That person’s usually someone’s who in their mid 20’s and they’re stuck and they just make a bad choice. Often it’s probably because they don’t have a lifetime of experience to know better. Probably from the ages of 21 through 28, that’s the first chance and opportunity for people to make the poor decision.

And it ends at that point for a lot of people. They make one mistake and they don’t make that mistake again. There are also people who play Russian roulette every Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes they get caught and sometimes they don’t. Someone will have a first DUI back when they’re 23 and won’t get caught again for five, six, seven years. Then, oftentimes, five, six, seven years later they get caught for a third time.

It’s usually people just over the age of 21 and so the next 15 or so years, whether their luck has run out or due to poor circumstances, they find themselves charged with such a driving offense.