Author: Sasha Tanner
When police stop an impaired driver, the investigation doesn’t always end at the roadside. Officers often trace the driver’s place of last drink (POLD) to determine whether a bar or restaurant may be overserving patrons.
Texas has Dram Shop Liability laws, which are based on Chapter 2 of the Alcoholic Beverage Code. Specifically, Sections 2.02 and 2.03 explain that alcohol establishments and their employees serving alcoholic beverages are liable for personal injury or property damage a person imposes, most commonly including impaired driving crashes. This is true if the person served was obviously intoxicated or under the age of 18 at the time the employee served him or her an alcoholic beverage. It pushes these businesses to a higher standard of conduct for impaired driving prevention while holding them accountable for these incidents.
Nonetheless, recording POLD is a critical data point for studying and projecting traffic safety methods in communities. One study conducted by Toomey and colleagues (2025) connects how implementing the POLD strategy affects alcohol-impaired driving rates in different jurisdictions in Minnesota.
Methods & Results
From 2010 to 2019, the research team collected information about POLD implementation and impaired driving rates from several jurisdictions across Minnesota. This information was extracted from a centralized database to track which jurisdictions used POLD or not.
To analyze how much each jurisdiction participated in recording POLD rates, they counted the number of days that they entered information into the database from the first to the last day. They then employed a survey targeted towards POLD-involved jurisdictions to analyze how different POLD implementation levels (no, low, or high implementation) affected alcohol-impaired driving rates.
Additionally, the researchers used 10 control variables that were divided into jurisdiction characteristics (e.g. demographics, poverty levels, employment rates, jurisdiction size, commute time, number of on and off-premise alcohol establishments, etc.) and agency size based on the number of full-time officers per 1,000 people in that jurisdiction. Finally, they processed the collected data for analysis.
They found that crime rates were slightly higher in POLD-involved jurisdictions than in jurisdictions without POLD. Moreover, the mean population across POLD-involved jurisdictions was higher as well.
Among the jurisdictions that used POLD, they found little differences in days of participation and DWI rates. Similarly, differences in DWI rates were small between no, low, and high implementation levels.
What Texas is Doing
In Texas, impaired driving goes beyond consuming alcoholic beverages. The Target Responsibility for Alcohol-Connected Emergencies (TRACE) program, which is operated by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC), helps law enforcement target where the drunk driver last consumed alcohol. Where POLD is managed by law enforcement in Minnesota, Texas already has an agency that tackles crashes caused by impaired drivers.
Additionally, Texas allows for consumable hemp products in bars. Combining alcohol and cannabis puts our highways at a greater risk, as each drug has impairing effects on their own. These are critical considerations which can be resolved through insights from the study.
However, there are major differences between Texas and Minnesota. For example, this study was conducted in Minnesota, and only 26 out of 75 jurisdictions had implemented POLD. On the other hand, Texas is a larger state in size and population with 254 counties in total. The following section connects the study’s results to apply to Texas highways.
Limitations & Policy Recommendations
1. Community Awareness of POLD
- Limitation: In the study, only 3 out of the 26 POLD jurisdictions had high POLD stakeholder awareness, meaning that alcohol establishments in other jurisdictions weren’t aware of POLD and its deterrent effects on the community.
- Recommendation: Awareness of POLD activities helps ensure a more responsible alcoholic beverage industry. Knowing the consequences of overservice helps hold responsible owners and their employees accountable. For example, alcohol establishments within Texas are educated about TRACE team activities. They are provided many educational resources through the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) website.
2. Stakeholder Collaboration
- Limitation: Since POLD was managed by single law enforcement agencies with lowered resources and staff, it may be necessary to connect them with other healthcare, judicial, licensing, or other law enforcement departments.
- Recommendation: The resource and staff shortage could be resolved by encouraging collaboration between agencies, such as the District Attorney’s (DA) office, crime laboratories, local law enforcement, state troopers, judicial offices, etc. TABC does an excellent job of coordinating with local law enforcement and state troopers within their assigned jurisdictions. Additionally, in DWI stops that do not involve a crash, agencies using the LEADRS platform have a field in the report to record POLD. Those results are transmitted to TABC for follow-up with the businesses.
3. Cannabis Policies
- Limitation: This study only focuses on identifying the place of last drink (i.e., alcoholic beverages) over other commonly sold drugs, such as THC products, in alcohol establishments.
- Recommendation: TABC could expand the TRACE program to consider THC products in impaired driving cases, especially consumable hemp products are sold in businesses that also sell alcohol. This data collection could assist the toxicology lab in identifying multiple substances.
4. Expanding Research
- Research could expand on how to strengthen the POLD implementation process and their effects on traffic safety.
- Toxicological data that reveals both cannabis and alcohol in the system implies a larger issue about locations that sell alcohol and THC products in the same place, putting the public at an increased and unique risk.
- POLD’s effects on impaired driving rates should be studied combined with other deterrent strategies (e.g., rideshare and safe-ride programs, public transportation, impaired driving campaigns, etc.) to combat overservice and alcohol-impaired driving.
- Moreover, researchers could conduct comparative studies on jurisdictions across Texas examining their TRACE implementation levels alongside the strength of different deterrent strategies to see how well these systems work together to combat impaired driving.
In any case, businesses that sell alcohol and/or THC products should be held accountable for overservice, especially since their incompliance poses grave harm for public safety. See the link below if you would like to read more about TABC or the research study.
Sources
- Alcoholic Beverage Code Chapter 2. §2.02 “Civil Liabilities for Serving Beverages.” (2025). https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/tab=1&code=AL&chapter=AL.2&artSec=2.02
- Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC). (n.d.). TRACE. https://www.tabc.texas.gov/public-safety/enforcement-initiatives-operations/trace/
- Toomey, T. L., K. M Lenk., D. Schriemer, R. MacLehose, N. Scholz, K. Gloppen, L.M. Bosma, E. Delehanty, and T. F. Nelson. (2025). A Place of Last Drink Initiative: Effects on Various Types of Crime. Substance Use & Misuse, 60(1), 130–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/10826084.2024.2419120
