Minimum Drinking Age Laws have Proven Their Effectiveness
Perhaps no alcohol safety measure has attracted more research and public attention or shown more consistent evidence for its effectiveness than the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) 21 law in the United States. MLDA laws were established in the States after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 (21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). Many States set the MLDA at 21 during that time. When the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971 (26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), many States lowered their drinking age to 18 or 19. Studies in the 1970s and 1980s showed significant increases in alcohol-related crashes involving youth aged 18-20 in States that lowered their drinking age. Consequently, the U.S. Congress adopted the National Uniform Drinking Age 21 Act and President Reagan signed the bill into law in 1984. Since 1988, the MLDA has been 21 in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. Between 1982 and 1998, the population-adjusted involvement rate of drinking drivers aged 20 and younger in fatal crashes decreased 59 percent. MLDA-21 laws have been shown to be associated with this decline. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has estimated that MLDA laws save approximately 900 lives a year in traffic fatalities alone. Contrary to all the research that has demonstrated the effectiveness of MLDA 21 and the lives it has saved over the years, there are still some critics of the drinking age and there are movements in some States to lower it again.
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I think it's more important to educate people on responsible drinking than abstinence from drinking. It is obvious that college students will choose to drink, even when while we've been growing up we've been taught abstinence. If that's the case, then shouldn't the adults choose to educate us on how to drink responsibly? Including not driving while drinking (any amount).
This site really needs a footnoting function. Most of the studies you cite in your argument are not available online. But one is: Hedlund JH, Ulmer RG, Preusser DF. "Determine Why There are Fewer Young Alcohol-Impaired Drivers." Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation; 2001. DOT HS 809 348.
It does indeed conclude that the incidence of fatal accidents by underage drunk drivers has gone down over time, but it does not conclude that change was due to the increased drinking age laws (or the zero tolerance laws). The study compares the changes in the accident rate in the US with the accident rate in Canada (with 18-19 drinking age laws) and found that the rates are virtually the same in both countries. To quote the report:
"Canadian reductions in youth drinking and driving, measured both by fatal crash data and by surveys, followed virtually the same pattern as in the United States. But the Canadian reduction was not due to laws directed at youth: the drinking age did not change during this time, and zero tolerance laws were implemented after the reduction had occurred. This means that the changes must have resulted from some combination of the difficult-to-assess educational and motivational programs and from other factors outside of traffic safety. This conclusion suggests that a substantial portion of the reduction in the United States also resulted from these same causes."
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/research/FewerYoungDrivers/iv__what_caused.htm #g.%20canadian
that alcohol related arrests or accidents were on the rise when (for example) the drinking age changes were staggered chronologically. In DC the age was 21 while it was 18 in Baltimore for a time. Naturally, the 18-20 set were driving into Baltimore, getting drunk, and coming back to DC, turning Route 1 (the old route from College Park to Baltimore) into a carpile. Oversight like this, coupled with a total lack of responsibility-based education, definitely had something to do with it in my mind.
It's also true that standards for automobile safety have increased significantly, in terms of how their manufactured. Laws about wearing seat belts are now enforced strictly as are laws about speeding. It is not the drinking age that has changed the decrease in highway deaths, but the other laws.
Maybe if people weren't allowed to get off with DUI's then they wouldn't drink and drive at all. In some places you don't even get your license suspended, just a ticket. Make the consequences of drinking and driving more serious and people are less likely to do it. To most people, the most serious consequence, potentially taking one's own or someone else's life, isn't something that is really considered. Having punishments that are harder to think "It'll never happen to me" about may help.