Lubbock Leads The D.W.I. Race With Amarillo (Or Does It?)

Lubbock and Amarillo are frequently compared to each other, and this time we're going to do it in a bad way.

The Metrics

There are some problems with the metrics between Amarillo and Lubbock. Amarillo actually resides in two different counties and adding the two just brings in a little too much surrounding area, so we'll focus first only on the towns of Amarillo and Lubbock and expand from there. We're also going to look just at 2023 stats so we can get a solid year worth of results.

And The Winner Is?

So which ones the winner, the one with more D.W.I.'s or less D.W.I.'s? I guess we'll just lay out the facts. The Amarillo Police Department charged 162  people with D.W.I. in 2023 will the Lubbock Police Department charged 555. Yikes!

Zooming Out

If we are looking at total Lubbock County D.W.I.'s, that number adds up to 693. For Amarillo Potter County came in at 652 D.W.I.'s, with another 91 in Randall County for a total of 743. So what it looks like is that people around Lubbock like to get city drunk while Amarillo likes to get country drunk (or, the geography of these areas lends to people being arrested that way). And again, for the Amarillo report we have to include two counties, and not only is that a lot of land to cover, some areas probably should not be included, meaning that the Lubbock and Amarillo areas are probably a statistical tie.

Last Item

These numbers only represent arrests. We have no idea if one area is just doing more enforcement and catching more D.W.I.'s or if there are more people driving intoxicated in general. I would say these are some genuinely scary figures and if you'd like to check out more numbers, you can do that here.