Montana might not be the best place to be this holiday season if you want to avoid drunken drivers.That's according to a report produced last month by Forbes.com studying each state's 2007 traffic fatalities involving legally drunk drivers.
Montana topped the list, with 106 fatalities, or 11.1 drunken driving-related deaths for every 100,000 people living in the 957,861-person state.
That number actually increased from 2006, when Montana reported 10.9 drunken driving-related deaths per capita.
Forbes pointed to the rural nature of the state as the main reason behind the numbers. Montana's population is spread across 146,000 square miles and 80 percent of travel in the state is on rural roads, according to the Montana Department of Transportation.
Coming in after Montana on the most drunken-driving related fatalities per capita were South Carolina, with 10.5 per 100,000 people. Mississippi (10.35), Wyoming (9.37) and Louisiana (8.57) rounded out the top five. The study looked at data released by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis involving accidents where at least one driver had a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or more.
On the other end of the spectrum, Utah had the lowest per capita drunken driving-related fatalities, with 1.93 per 100,000 people in 2007. Finishing out the list of the five states with the lowest rates were New York (1.99), Massachusetts (2.26), New Jersey (2.29) and Rhode Island (2.36).
Forbes.com, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA/DOT
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