Alcohol Related Fatal Crashes in Wyoming: County Level Data – Gerber Injury Law

After analyzing Fatal crashes in the United States over a 20 year period, we found that Fremont County had the highest percentage of fatal crashes that were alcohol-related. To add context to this, we dove deeper.

In Fremont County, 47 percent of all fatal crashes involved alcohol during the study period, the highest percentage of any county in the US. In the table below, we break it down further by buzzed and drunk and compare all counties in Wyoming.

County	PCT BAC >0.01	PCT BAC >=0.08
Fremont	51%	39%
Sublette	51%	37%
Sheridan	43%	33%
Crook	49%	33%
Big Horn	46%	32%
Park	46%	31%
Weston	57%	28%
Goshen	45%	27%
Campbell	38%	26%
Natrona	41%	24%
Converse	41%	24%
Teton	41%	23%
Hot Springs	41%	22%
Uinta	35%	21%
Laramie	36%	20%
Lincoln	27%	19%
Sweetwater	33%	19%
Johnson	31%	18%
Washakie	28%	16%
Platte	32%	15%
Albany	28%	15%
Carbon	31%	14%
Niobrara	29%	8%

Why is it so high in Fremont County?  While there are likely several factors involved, we found two possible explanations.  The first is that drivers fatal crashes in Fremont County had the highest average BAC of any county in Wyoming.

County	Mean BAC of drivers withany alcohol in their system	Mean BAC of drunk drivers
Fremont	0.175	0.215
Lincoln	0.162	0.209
Sublette	0.156	0.202
Sheridan	0.152	0.189
Campbell	0.146	0.199
Crook	0.141	0.198
Washakie	0.140	0.218
Park	0.136	0.183
Goshen	0.131	0.201
Natrona	0.127	0.193
Sweetwater	0.126	0.192
Laramie	0.126	0.194
Converse	0.126	0.190
Big Horn	0.125	0.167
Uinta	0.123	0.184
Albany	0.122	0.204
Johnson	0.116	0.176
Platte	0.116	0.199
Teton	0.108	0.175
Weston	0.107	0.185
Carbon	0.098	0.191
Hot Springs	0.089	0.135
Niobrara	0.085	0.206

The second is potentially more contentious. Fremont County is home to tribal gambling and has the state’s only hotel and casinos.  Many studies have found a connection between an increase in fatal crashes and the presence of casinos, including one from the Journal of Health Economics that found an increase of 9.2 percent on average. We plotted all fatal crashes along with the three casinos to visualize the potential relationships. Red dots indicate a crash involving at least one driver with a BAC over .08, orange indicates a driver with a BAC between .01 and .07 and grey dots indicate crashes where neither driver had alcohol in their system.