Each year thousands of persons convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) are sentenced to short term educational courses directed at modifying their drinking driving behavior. Do such courses really impact drunk driving recidivism? Issues such as this were the subject of an evaluation of North Carolina's Alcohol and Drug Education Traffic Schools (ADETS).

In 1980 and 1981, 33,825 first time DUI convictees attended and completed the school (the study group) while 16,429 did not (the comparison group). The driving performance of these two groups is compared controlling for other variables on which they differed and which were related to DUI recidivism such as age, race and BAC at the time of initial arrest. Adjusted cumulative quarterly recidivism rates on a number of outcome measures were computed for each of the groups. Several different time frames were examined and the experience of the two groups contrasted. For all outcome measures studied and for all time frames examined, the groups attending ADETS, which were less likely to receive active license suspensions, fared worse. The results were highly statistically significant.