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What Does It Mean to be a Designated Driver?

by Carley Smiddy | Jan 18, 2023 | Addiction , Health & Wellness

Choosing a designated driver instead of driving while intoxicated is a simple way to save lives. Drunk driving accidents are entirely preventable, yet they are responsible for 30% of automotive fatalities and 32 deaths each day in the United States. The statistics are staggering, but they illustrate that assigning a designated driver should be a top priority whenever you’re planning to drink and do some traveling.

What is a designated driver?

Designated driver definitions can vary, but they all describe someone who abstains from drinking so they can drive others to and from a party, event, or anywhere alcohol is served up. The designated driver remains sober by refusing and abstaining from ALL alcohol or mind-altering substances. They have one job: keeping others safe by staying sober behind the wheel.

Harvard University launched its designated driver program in 1988. Within 6 years of the program’s creation, drunk driving fatalities had decreased by a whopping 30%. Within 10 years, designated drivers had saved over 50,000 lives, and that number has continued rising ever since. While these results are a significant step in the right direction, there is still much more work to be done.

Why is a designated driver important?

You may have seen the current “Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving” public service campaign, which touches on the dangers of driving after drinking even a small amount of alcohol. Driving with a blood alcohol content (BAC) of .08 or more is illegal, but a person can still be impaired before they reach the BAC limit.

Drinking and driving is not just dangerous and illegal; it’s also expensive. If someone is caught driving with a .08 BAC or higher, they will likely be arrested and charged with driving under the influence (DUI). A single DUI can cost a person thousands of dollars in court fees and make it illegal for them to drive. In other words, it’s always best to choose a designated driver.

Designated drivers are nearly universally respected, as their role is to get everyone home safely. If you volunteer as a designated driver, you’re bound to receive praise from friends, peers, family members, law enforcement officers, and even bartenders. However, people don’t become designated drivers just for the respect — they do it to help keep others alive.

importance of a designated sober driver

When do you need a designated driver?

If you and your friends need a car to get to a party, concert, sporting event, or anywhere alcohol is being served, you need a designated driver so no one in your party drinks and drives. A designated driver can be chosen, or you can take turns so someone else abstains and drives next time.

Where to find a designated driver?

If you and your friends are struggling to choose a designated driver, you can always volunteer yourself. Keep in mind that this choice can be difficult to make if you’re in early recovery, as being around others who are drinking can be a trigger for alcohol use. However, a Personal Recovery Assistant (PRA) or sober companion from Hired Power can provide the direct support, strategies, and tools necessary to help you avoid temptations and remain sober when you decide to act as a designated driver.

Even if nobody wants to be the designated driver, there are still many other options that will prevent you from driving drunk. Options include taxis, buses, Uber, Lyft, and even limousine services. Many college campuses also offer designated driver services and programs.

If you are to choose your own designated driver, there are a few things to keep in mind. The designated driver must:

  • Have a valid driver’s license
  • Verbally identify themselves as a designated driver
  • Abstain from ALL alcohol and mind-altering drugs during the event or outing

Keep in mind that local laws surrounding the required age of a designated driver may vary. Make sure to review your area’s regulations if your chosen driver is under the age of 21.

Assigning a designated driver isn’t just safe and responsible; it’s also the right thing to do. So whenever you’re planning a memorable evening out with friends or loved ones in the future, always remember to consider the most important part: the designated driver.

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If you or someone you know is struggling with alcohol, the caring experts at Hired Power can help facilitate a recovery plan that creates the foundation for a successful healing journey. Hired Power provides a compassionate and personalized approach to the entire recovery process. With over 20 years of experience in personal recovery assistance and full-service recovery support for clients and families, we can help you or your loved one achieve and maintain successful recovery and fulfillment. From interventions and case management to drug and alcohol monitoring and personal recovery assistants, Hired Power is your designated partner to Bring Recovery Home. Contact us today to learn more about how our approach can help you begin the recovery journey.

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People Don’t Seem to Get What ‘Designated Driver’ Means

A new study found that around 40 percent of designated drivers drink, and almost 20 percent do so to the point that their own ability to drive may be impaired

Rachel Nuwer

Rachel Nuwer

Photo: Chaval Brasil

People’s definition of “designated drivers”—those tasked with driving their drinking friends from bar to bar and getting them home safely—vary. Some think a designated driver shouldn’t drink at all. Others say it’s fine if the driver has a drink or two.

The latter turns out to be the more popular view.

A new study found that around 40 percent of designated drivers drink and almost 20 percent do so to the point that their own ability to drive may be impaired, NBC News reports . The authors surveyed 165 designated drivers who were exiting bars in Florida, asking them what they’d had to drink, if anything, and giving them a Brethalyzer test. Currently, 0.08 is the cut off for legally driving in the U.S.; NBC points out that the National Transportation Safety Board recommended lowering that limit to 0.05 last month. In the study, 18 percent of the drivers had breath alcohol concentrations of 0.05 or more. NBC:

To put it into a global context, the United States’ current legal limit of .08 is on the higher end. Countries across Europe like Germany, France and Italy have a limit of .05; in Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, among other places, it’s .02; and many countries have zero tolerance laws.

While chances are high that all of the designated drivers from the study managed to get their drunk friends home safely, the U.S. Department of Transportation reports that, in 2010, 5.8 percent of fatal traffic accidents were caused by drivers with breath alcohol concentrations percents of 0.01 to 0.07—still legal, but still potentially dangerous.

More from Smithsonian.com:

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Rachel Nuwer

Rachel Nuwer | | READ MORE

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.

The History of Designated Driving

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And popularized it they did.

Messages advocating the prevention of drunk driving while expounding on the virtues of the designated driver concept were soon written into scripts for many of the highly rated TV shows of the time, e.g. “The Cosby Show,” “Cheers,” and “L.A. Law.” By incorporating messaging into these popular programs, the designated driver concept quickly gained steam and acceptance. The aforementioned networks even aired public service announcements to further foster the use of the program. Additional exposure was gained when “ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” did a special report on the Project – The New York Times even featured it on the front page.

As time passed and more and more people became familiar with the idea of designated drivers, many famous people and groups advocated in favor of the campaign. Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, to name a few, endorsed it. As did Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  The National Highway Safety Administration did the same in 1993, along with the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. So commonplace was the term in use that it appeared in the 1991 Random House Webster’s College Dictionary .

There were 23,626 alcohol-related fatalities reported in late 1988 when the designated driver campaign began; almost a decade later in 1994, the number of deaths had dropped 30% to 16,580 during the same period.

Today, one can consider the Harvard Alcohol Project a success. Designated driving is prevalent and a very much accepted – and effective – safe driving practice. Many people have been designated drivers and many still have been driven safely back to their homes themselves by responsible drivers.

Most information contained in this post was gathered from the Harvard Alcohol Project website. Additional information from the Wikipedia page .

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The Importance of Designated Drivers

Ellie Swain

Medically Reviewed by Annamarie Coy, BA, ICPR, MATS 

In this article

What is a Designated Driver?

A designated driver agrees not to drink alcohol so they can safely drive their friends, family, and colleagues home after an event with alcohol consumption.

In 1988, Harvard’s School of Public Health introduced the Harvard Alcohol Project to reduce drunk driving fatalities. 7 The project introduced the Scandinavian designated driver concept to the United States.

Instead of being an anti-alcohol project, the designated driver concept asked people to plan and be responsible when drinking alcohol. This perspective helped shift how the public viewed alcohol consumption outside the home.

How Does Designated Driving Work?

People assign designated drivers at social events that involve drinking alcohol . Whoever is chosen must remain sober throughout the event to ensure their friends or family get home safely once the effects of alcohol set in.

Some people who do not drink alcohol but enjoy attending social events prefer being the designated driver. Nobody will poke fun at them or pressure them for not drinking because people acknowledge the responsibility of the task.

Some establishments and companies run a designated driver campaign. They offer complimentary, non-alcoholic drinks to sober drivers to make the role more enjoyable.

Who Should be a Designated Driver?

Here are some tips on how to choose designated drivers wisely:

  • Pick a responsible and safe driver with a valid license and current automobile insurance
  • Choose someone who has the discipline to resist the temptation of alcohol
  • Select someone who will either agree to come and pick everyone up when asked or will stay on location and avoid alcohol
  • Be confident that the chosen designated driver is available when you need them to be

You may also use professional car services like Uber or Lyft, allowing people to request a ride to and from locations. Around big holidays , many taxis or local ride services provide free trips to ensure people get home safely without drunk driving. 

If you have brought your car to an event, leave it where it is if you have started drinking. Come back for it when you have sobered up. Bars will often have resources to help you get home safely.

Tips for a Successful Designated Driver Plan

Whether you are always the designated driver among loved ones or you switch turns, here are some tips to achieve a successful designated driver plan:

  • Consume a large meal beforehand so you are full and not tempted to drink
  • Drink soft drinks, flavored beverages, or ‘mocktails’ if you want to have a drink in your hand; this strategy also helps avoid conversations about why you are not drinking
  • Plan before everyone begins drinking; do not wait until alcohol consumption has started, and rely on who is the ‘least drunk’
  • Avoid the bar area so you don’t get tempted to drink
  • Keep yourself occupied by playing darts or pool, dancing, or talking to people
  • Keep hold of everyone’s car keys to ensure nobody leaves drunk and tries to drive themselves home

Being a designated driver is a huge responsibility that can save lives. You must remain sober all night.

No amount of alcohol is worth going back on your word. Once everyone starts drinking, making healthy, rational decisions is more challenging.

Can a Designated Driver Have One Drink?

Having a drink or two is unsafe because it will affect your judgment and driving ability. It is best not to drink to keep your loved ones safe.

It takes approximately three hours to eliminate two alcoholic beverages, depending on your weight. Nothing can quicken this process, like drinking coffee or having a cold shower.

Drinking and Driving Statistics

Here are some statistics about drunk driving: 1,6

  • About 32 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes every day 
  • In 2020, 11,654 people died in motor vehicle crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers, accounting for 30% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States
  • 62% of people who died in crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers in 2020 were the alcohol-impaired drivers themselves
  • 38% were passengers of alcohol-impaired drivers, drivers or passengers of another vehicle, or nonoccupants (such as a pedestrian)

Many people still drive while intoxicated despite all the warnings. Drunk driving numbers for high schoolers reduced by half between 1991 and 2012, but teenagers are still at risk whether they are driving or not. 4

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A designated driver is essential for everyone to get home safely. They are an integral part of keeping roads safe.

Educating friends and family about the designated driver concept can help reduce the number of vehicle accidents and deaths. Whether volunteers or paid, the designated driver of any group has a big responsibility.

Related Pages

Alcoholism resources and programs, how long does alcohol stay in your system, dehydration from alcohol: 5 tips to prevent and treat it.

  • Impaired Driving: Get the Facts , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2020.
  • Romano et al. “Drugs and alcohol: their relative crash risk.” Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs, 2014.
  • Voas et al. “Alcohol-related risk of driver fatalities: an update using 2007 data.” Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs, 2012.
  • “ Teen Drinking and Driving .” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2012.
  • Bergen et al. “Characteristics of designated drivers and their passengers from the 2007 National Roadside Survey in the United States.” Traffic injury prevention, 2014.
  • "Drunk Driving." U.S. Department of Transportation.

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Rethinking the role of the designated driver

Traffic safety pulse news.

Most of us are familiar with the term "designated driver" and we know that refers to the selection of a person who remains sober (as the responsible driver of a vehicle) when others have been drinking alcoholic beverages.

A designated driver plays a critical role in getting everyone home safe and sound, but based on both anecdotal and empirical findings, demonstrating that being the “DD” can actually be fun was seen as a challenge in many communities.

Designated Driver

According to Cpl. Iván Alvarado, of the Colorado State Patrol, the key to reducing incidences of impaired driving within the Latino community is education. “Residents who learned to drive in other countries may believe that a designated driver is the one who has had the least amount of alcohol.”

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What the 'designated driver' campaign could teach us about how to handle the pandemic, copy the code below to embed the wbur audio player on your site.

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Signs in Provincetown this past summer remind everyone to wear a mask in public to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

During the pandemic, almost everything seems to be a struggle. Among the challenges for public health professionals: getting people to take precautions.

Jay Winsten was the architect of the U.S. "Designated Driver" campaign that focused on shifting the culture of drinking and driving — which contributed to a sharp decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities and injuries.

Winsten, now the director of the Initiative on Communication Strategies for Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says effective public health communication is crucial to get people to change their behavior.

He joined WBUR's Weekend Edition to discuss. Read highlights from the extended interview below.

Interview Highlights

On the challenge of reaching people where they are, to convince them the COVID-19 vaccine is safe:

“It's not simply about who the right spokespersons should be for different segments of the population, but how are those spokespersons going to frame the message? And is there going to be qualitative research — and quantitative — to understand how different segments of the population are likely to respond.”

On the difficulty of conducting an effective public health information campaign during the pandemic:

“Everything is on a very, very short timeline. We almost have to set up the mechanisms long in advance so that they can be called upon when there's a crisis. You almost want to invent a brain trust that hasn't existed before, and it's on call for situations like this as [they] arise. What I'm interested in is doing, at some point, is a debrief on how things have gone from the communications point of view with COVID-19 — to examine what could have been done differently at each particular key moment in time and then to make recommendations that ... could also be applied immediately with regards to vaccination hesitation."

On what actually works and what doesn't work in getting people to change behavior with public health messaging:

“The first thing that’s crucial is consistency of the message. You can’t have conflicting messages, as we have had in the current situation as a consequence of politics … especially when you had the president of the United States disagreeing publicly and emphatically with his public health experts on some key issues. Without that consistency, you're not going to get the level of behavior change to be disseminated through the whole population that you're going to need. You also need transparency. You need to really be candid about what you know and what you don't know. And that comes in handy when you need to change your recommendations.”

On how the Designated Driver campaign became so successful:

"With our Designated Driver campaign ... there were only three television networks. There was no cable. There was no social media. You could reach everyone on any given evening. ... We did the research to figure out what formulation of our urging people to choose a designated driver was likely to resonate with a large proportion of the population. [In focus groups], we learned that what was crucial is that the designated driver not be positioned in advertising as, you know, the party pooper, the person who was out of the loop, who was throwing a wet towel ... on the evening. Rather, [they] had to be positioned as an integral, important and popular member of the social group — that they were each taking their turn, protecting their friends. [And] we were also able to go to Hollywood. Over 160 primetime TV episodes depicted the use of the designated drivers right in the scripts and storylines: "Cheers," "L.A. Law" and "The Cosby Show." And that kind of thing really has not been done very much over the past year."

On the lack of public health messaging through social media during the pandemic:

“It's not just about pushing out a message any longer. It's about two-way and multi-way communication. And one of the challenges for public health professionals is to make sure we stay a part of the conversation because it can easily go on without us, and it sometimes does. Everything is in such an urgent rush now that I worry that even with the large amounts of money that are going to be spent by the private sector and the federal government on the communication side around vaccination, that the research is going to get short shrift. And therefore the impact of the communications will be compromised as a result."

"We're going to have to do the best we can respecting people's rights to listen to who they choose to listen to and to believe who they choose to believe. That's called freedom. And we simply have to get through to them in ways that we haven't figured out yet, to get them to listen to what we're trying to say. And we have to learn to listen to what they're trying to say. Because if it's not a two-way street, we're not respecting each other, we're not understanding each other, and we're not going to succeed."

On the direction from the Biden administration:

“A key thing that gives me hope is [that] we're going to have consistency of message out of the federal government, starting at the very top and including [that] the public health experts are going to be able to say what they believe based upon research and knowledge. And that's a crucial change in terms of the messaging environment. Nothing could happen to improve things without that. And so I'm guardedly optimistic."

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Paul Connearney Weekend Managing Editor Paul Connearney is the Weekend Managing Editor and Weekday Senior Writer who oversees WBUR's local news operations on weekends and contributes to WBUR's All Things Considered during the week.

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Cambridge Dictionary

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Meaning of designated driver in English

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  • bus captain
  • dispatch rider
  • motorcyclist
  • racing car driver
  • racing driver
  • Sunday driver
  • taxi driver

designated driver | American Dictionary

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Harvard Alcohol Project: Designated Driver

The New York Times reported on the campaign’s launch in a front page story on August 31, 1988:

The three major television networks and the Hollywood studios that produce most of their programming are joining in a coordinated attack against drinking and driving that will include dialogue in popular entertainment shows as well as public-service advertising…The Harvard Alcohol Project, as the cooperative effort is called, is intended “to model a new social norm.” While there have been informal attempts in the past to coordinate advertising and entertainment programming, “there has never been anything this organized,” said Grant Tinker, former chairman of NBC.

Designated Driver Campaign "Life of the Party" poster on set of TV-show "CHEERS"

At Harvard’s request, ABC, CBS, and NBC also aired frequent public service announcements (PSAs) during prime time encouraging the use of designated drivers. This was the first time that the three networks produced and sponsored simultaneous campaigns with the same message. Harvard’s public relations activities further reinforced the campaign, generating extensive news coverage.

According to industry estimates, the campaign received over $100 million each year in donated television airtime. The campaign soon became transformed into a national movement as a broad range of prominent individuals (e.g., President George Bush, President Bill Clinton, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop); government agencies (e.g., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA], the federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention); national organizations and advocacy groups (e.g., Mothers Against Drunk Driving); professional sports leagues (e.g., Major League Baseball [MLB], National Basketball Association [NBA]); major corporations (e.g., State Farm Insurance); and state and local police departments, endorsed and promoted the designated driver concept.

Children on parade float featuring U.S. Designated Driver Campaign ad: The Designated Driver Is the Life of the Party" (Harvard Alcohol Project)

When the campaign began in late 1988, annual alcohol-related traffic fatalities stood at 23,626. By 1994, fatalities had declined by 30%. A variety of factors were responsible for this striking progress, including new laws and strict enforcement. Polling data, cited above, suggests that the Designated Driver Campaign was an important factor, among the mix of factors, explaining the downward trend.

Why did the Designated Driver Campaign succeed?

The campaign’s message was narrowly focused, highly specific, and easily communicated. the chc did not attempt to address the entirety of alcohol use and abuse in american society. rather, the chc took a highly complex problem, broke it down into separate, manageable components, and selected one component where there seemed to be a meaningful opportunity to achieve change at the time., the campaign’s message called for only a modest shift in behavior.   the message was not anti-alcohol. it said, “if you and your companions drink alcoholic beverages, drink in moderation — and take your turn as the designated driver who doesn’t drink at all.”, instead of a negative message (“don’t drink and drive”), the campaign promoted a positive, empowering message (“the designated driver is the life of the party.”), there was a broad societal consensus about the need to address the problem of drunken driving , and there were no economic interests opposed to the campaign., the timing was right. mothers against drunken driving (madd), launched in 1980, had built a strong foundation of public understanding of the drunk driving problem, and successfully advocated for tough laws that saved many lives. however, media attention to the problem declined sharply by the mid-1980s, and annual fatalities had leveled off. there was a need for a fresh, new idea to rejuvenate the anti-drunken driving movement., it was a comparatively easy step for hollywood writers to support the campaign. the designated driver message could be incorporated into scripts with a line or two of dialogue — it did not require major changes in character development or the story line., the issue of drunken driving hit close to home for many members of the hollywood community whose teenage children were potentially at risk. and, for many others in the creative community, alcoholism had touched the lives of a family member or friend; they were eager to help address any aspect of alcohol abuse. the issue had personal relevance for them., the campaign had the strong, sustained support of a leading member of the hollywood community — grant tinker, former chairman of nbc and a prominent tv producer — who was held in enormously high regard by his peers. the campaign assembled an advisory board of key individuals in the hollywood community, who were recruited with grant tinker’s leadership, to provide ready access to a broad array of directors, writers, producers, and actors who could help the campaign. the campaign also won formal endorsements from the boards of the writers guild of america, west and the screen actors guild., the campaign did not rely on the intermediary of a public relations agency, which might have diminished the effort’s credibility. chc staff spent 25 workweeks in hollywood meeting individually with 250 key people in the hollywood community. the campaign asked for hollywood’s support, but didn’t demand it , and was deeply respectful of the community’s core value of creative freedom., to capture and sustain the attention and interest of the creative community, the campaign employed numerous tactics to follow-up after face-to-face meetings — billboards on sunset strip, aerial advertising over malibu beaches, designated driver posters and table cards for studios’ holiday parties, etc.  the steady drumbeat of messaging directed at the hollywood creative community helped to sustain the attention of producers and writers..

In 2017, Harvard Business School published a case study by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Professor Howard Koh and researcher Pamela Yatsko , examining the origins of the CHC, lessons learned from the Designated Driver Campaign, and evidence of the campaign’s impact on alcohol-related traffic fatalities. The evaluation section of that study is excerpted, here, with permission:

Dr. Howard Koh and Pamela Yatsko, “Jay Winsten and the Designated Driver Campaign,” Harvard Business School Case Study, February 2017, #ALI013-PDF-ENG (https://hbsp.harvard.edu/home/)

[excerpted with permission].

The high level of media exposure generated by the Designated Driver Campaign over four TV seasons helped to rejuvenate an anti-drunk driving movement that had temporarily run out of steam. Moreover, findings from large-scale national surveys strongly suggest that the Designated Driver Campaign contributed to a sharp increase in the self-reported use of designated drivers in the United States and a marked decrease in the number of drinking drivers on roads, as measured directly in roadside surveys using breathalyzers and in other studies.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the campaign’s influence came from the National Roadside Survey, a large-scale survey sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in which a national sample of drivers were stopped for confidential breath testing on weekend nights (when drinking is most likely to occur). Approximately 95% of drivers who were stopped consented to a breath test and interview. [i]  The percentage of tested drivers found to have positive BACs (blood alcohol levels) declined from 25.9% in 1986 to 16.9% in 1996. In the same surveys, the percentage of drivers who self-identified as designated drivers rose from 5% in 1986 to 24.7% in 1996. Notably, two-thirds of designated drivers in the 1996 roadside survey were found to have BACs of 0.0%. [ii]

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), commenting on roadside survey findings in its 10 th  Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health in 2000, stated:

The use of designated drivers has been widely promoted in the United States since 1988 when Jay Winsten at the Harvard School of Public Health initiated a national campaign with the television industry…In the 1996 National Roadside Survey, most of the designated drivers (82%) had BACs between zero and 0.02%. In all, about a third of designated drivers consumed some alcohol before driving, but most (95%) remained at BACs below the legal limit of 0.08% (Fell et al. 1997)…Thus, many people now use designated drivers, and most designated drivers in roadside surveys do not exceed the legal BAC limit. However, designated drivers who do exceed the legal limit, like any driver who does so, are at greater risk of crashing and endangering their passengers. [iii]

The uptake in the use of designated drivers was greatest among young adults. In the 1993 National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behavior, sponsored by NHTSA, 59% of young adults ages 19-20 reported serving as a designated driver during the previous 12 months, and 49% reported riding with a designated driver after drinking. Among young adults aged 21-29, some 54% reported serving as designated drivers, and 50% reported riding with a designated driver after drinking. [iv]  Those gains were reinforced as young adults passed along the practice of choosing a designated driver from one generation to the next. In the 2008 survey, 72% of young adults aged 21-24 said they served as a designated driver during the previous 12 months, and 61% said they rode with a designated driver after drinking. [v]

Monitoring the Future, an ongoing national survey of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults conducted by the University of Michigan with funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, documented a decline in the prevalence of self-reported driving after drinking among high school seniors, and an increase in social disapproval of drinking and driving behavior within the same group. The study’s authors suggested that “the substantial decline in drinking and driving observed between 1984 and 1997 may have occurred largely because of a substantial change in the social acceptability of such behavior among young people themselves.” The researchers pointed to three larger societal trends to help account for the rising level of social disapproval of drinking and driving: “the substantial national attention given to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving efforts (which peaked around 1984), the increases in minimum drinking ages (which occurred primarily between 1984 and 1987), and the national campaign for ‘designated drivers’ (which occurred primarily between 1989 and 1992).” [vi]

By its nature, the evaluation of a national campaign like the Designated Driver Campaign is hampered by the absence of a carefully matched non-exposure control group, which precludes any definitive judgment on the campaign’s contribution to the decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities. That said, the widespread adoption of the designated driver concept, fueled by heavy media exposure for the campaign’s message starting in late 1988, notably coincided with a dramatic decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Between 1988-1992, the trend in alcohol-related traffic fatalities—after stagnating in the mid-1980s during a period of diminished media attention—turned sharply downward, declining by 25%, from 23,641 to 17,699; in comparison, non-alcohol-related traffic fatalities fell by only 5%. [vii]  The steepest decline in this period occurred over a narrow two-year stretch from 1990-1992, when alcohol-related traffic fatalities declined by a whopping 20%—the largest two-year decline since 1982 when uniformly collected data on alcohol-related traffic fatalities first became available. [viii]  The Center attributed this striking progress to the combined impact of new laws, enhanced enforcement, grassroots advocacy, and the massive publicity generated by the Designated Driver Campaign. [ix]

Most of the progress was achieved among social drinkers, and those gains proved to be stable over subsequent decades. In contrast, problem drinkers and alcoholics were highly resistant to change—and still are today. After 1992, the annual number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities leveled off at approximately 17,000 and remained stuck there for several years before gradually drifting downward over the ensuing two decades to 11,731 in 2014. [x]  Interestingly, the two periods of maximum media interest in the drunk driving problem—MADD’s activities between 1980-1985 and Harvard’s Designated Driver Campaign between 1988-1993—coincided with rapid, large-scale reductions in alcohol-related traffic fatalities.

The Designated Driver Campaign also yielded important side benefits. The international export of popular U.S. television series carrying the designated driver message helped to propagate widespread diffusion of the designated driver concept, as did international press coverage of the U.S. Designated Driver Campaign. In continental Europe, traffic safety agencies in sixteen countries, starting with Belgium in 1995, launched designated driver campaigns in conjunction with nonprofit and industry partners. [xi]  In the U.K., the Coca-Cola Company joined with the British government in a highly publicized campaign that offered free nonalcoholic drinks to designated drivers in pubs and restaurants, crediting the Harvard Alcohol Project as the campaign’s inspiration. [xii]  Many of these campaigns are still ongoing. Designated driver initiatives also were launched in Australia, New Zealand, and (more recently) China.

Based on lessons learned from the Distracted Driver Campaign, Winsten and his team subsequently developed a national media initiative to recruit volunteer mentors for at-risk youth. The foundation for this initiative was a landmark evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program, which found substantial beneficial effects of formal mentoring relationships in promoting positive youth development and preventing adolescent substance abuse and violence. [xiii]  With funding from the MCJ Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Harvard Mentoring Project was launched in 1997 to promote the social role of “mentor” and recruit large numbers of volunteer mentors by mobilizing the Hollywood creative community and 17 broadcast and cable networks. [xiv]  Conducted in collaboration with the nonprofit MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, with General Colin Powell serving as lead spokesperson, the 15-year initiative won the support of Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, governors and mayors across the country, and a wide array of grass-root nonprofit organizations. Winsten’s relationship with President Clinton helped to secure increased federal funding for mentoring programs, and the inclusion of references to youth mentoring in Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union Address. The campaign is credited with helping to greatly expand the number of young people receiving the benefits of a formal mentoring program. [xv]  In 1997, an estimated 300,000 young people received formal mentoring program benefits, compared to 3 million in 2005. [xvi]  The mentoring campaign continues today under MENTOR’s leadership. [xvii]

The Chronicle of Philanthropy  reported in 1994 that the [designated driver] campaign’s success “persuaded many grant makers that skillful collaboration with news and entertainment industries could advance social transformation.” [xviii]  Frank Karel III, vice president for communications at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told the  Chronicle , “It’s amazing, the sea change that’s happened in the past five years…Today, foundations that once rejected media work out of hand are using it very productively and systematically.” The Designated Driver Campaign likewise was cited for its influence on the direction of social science agenda-setting research. [xix]

The highly visible success of the Designated Driver Campaign also galvanized many advocacy groups to set up offices in Hollywood to lobby for inclusion of messages on issues such as recycling. Senior figures in Hollywood also organized their own efforts. For example, the New York Times reported that the “heads of the major television studios and the entertainment branches of the television networks embraced Mr. Winsten’s concept of sending a message through their medium and created an organization to promote environmental issues.” [xx]  The organization, called the Environmental Media Association (EMA), successfully promoted recycling as environmentally responsible behavior, among its many other initiatives. From a communications perspective, the recycling issue shared key attributes of designated driver: the behavior was sharply defined and easy to depict. As TV writers portrayed popular characters engaging in recycling and pressuring others to do the same, the idea spread like wildfire and became a cultural norm.

Similarly, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established an ongoing presence in Hollywood, partnering with USC’s Norman Lear Center to create the Hollywood, Health & Society program. Between 2009-2015, the program provided expert consultations on a range of health issues, influencing the storylines of almost 900 TV episodes. [xxi]  Media advocacy had become an industry, said the Lear Center’s [Founding Director, Marty] Kaplan, adding, “Winsten was a pioneer.”

[i]  Robert B. Voas, Joann Wells, Diane Lestina, Allan Williams, and Michael Greener, “Drinking and Driving in the United States: The 1996 Roadside Survey,”  Accident Analysis & Prevention, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 267-275, 1998. [ii]  Fell, J.; Voas, R.B.; and Lange, J.E. Designated driver concept: Extent of use in the USA. J Traffic Med 25(3–4):109–114, 1997. Lund, A.K., and Wolfe, A.C. Changes in the incidence of alcohol-impaired driving in the United States, 1973–1986. J Stud Alcohol 52(4):293–301, 1991.  Cited in Voas, R.B.; Wells, J.K.; Lestina, D.C.; Williams, A.F.; and Greene, M.A. Drinking and Driving in the U.S.: The 1996 National Roadside Survey. NHTSA Traffic Task No. 152. Arlington, VA: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 1997,  pp. 389-390. [iii]  10th Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health, June 2000,  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. [iv]  Timothy L. Jones and John M. Boyle, “National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors: 1995,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, July 1996,  https://ntl.bts.gov/lib/25000/25900/25912/DOT-HS-808-438.pdf , accessed February 2017. [v]  “National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behaviors: 2008, Volume II, Findings Report,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, p. 39,   https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2011102413.xhtml , accessed February 2017. [vi]  Patrick O’Malley and Lloyd D. Johnston, “Drinking and Driving Among U.S, High School Seniors, 1984-1997,” American Journal of  Public Health, May 1999, Volume 89, Number 5, p. 684,  http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.89.5.678 , accessed February 2017. [vii]  “Reduction in Alcohol-Related Traffic Fatalities — United States, 1990-1992 , ” MMWR Weekly, Centers for Disease Control, December 3, 1993,  https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00022270.htm , accessed January 2017. [viii]   Ibid. [ix]  “Harvard Alcohol Project,” op. cit. [x]   “Traffic Safety Facts: Alcohol-Impaired Driving,” National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration website, December 2015,    https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812231 , accessed February 2017. [xi]  De Neve, P. (n.d.). Bob in Europe, Presentation, Belgian Road Safety Institute. “BOB campaign: development and evolution,” http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/pdf/projects/euro-bob_2003–2004.pdf, accessed May 2014. [xii]  “Designated Driver: A 30 year History of Campaigning for Road Safety,” Coca Cola Co UK website, December 15, 2016,   http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/who-were-the-first-designated-drivers-exploring-30-years-of-heroes , accessed February 2017. [xiii]  Jean Baldwin Grossman, Nancy Resch, Joseph P. Tierney, “Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brother/Big Sisters  (Reissue of 1995 Study), Issuelab website, September 15, 2000,  http://ppv.issuelab.org/resource/making_a_difference_an_impact_study_of_big_brothers_big_sisters_re_issue_of_1995_study , accessed February 20, 2017. [xiv]  Stuart Elliot, “All Aboard for the Campaign for a Few Good Mentors,” New York Times, November 7, 1997,  http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/07/business/media-business-advertising-all-aboard-for-campaign-for-few-good-mentors.html , accessed February 20, 2017; and “General Colin Powell to Headline National Mentoring Month 2010,” Youth.gov website,  http://youth.gov/feature-article/general-colin-l-powell-headline-national-mentoring-month-2010 , accessed February 2017. [xv]  “Media Campaign Focuses National Attention on Mentoring Program for At-Risk Youths,” Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website, February 13, 2004,   http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/program_results_reports/2004/rwjf14096 , accessed February 2017. [xvi]  “Mentoring in America 2005: A Summary of New Research,” MENTOR National Mentoring Partnership, 2006, https://www.nationalservice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/06_0503_mentoring_factsheet.pdf , accessed February 2017. [xvii]  “President Obama Declares Januaryb2016 National Mentoring Month, Mentor website,  https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/01/04/799309/10158867/en/PRESIDENT-OBAMA-DECLARES-JANUARY-2016-NATIONAL-MENTORING-MONTH.html , accessed February 2017. [xviii]  Bailey, Anne Lowery Bailey, “The Media Age Comes to Philanthropy,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, Vol. VI, No. 11, March 22, 1994, pp. 6-9. [xix]  J.W. Dearing and E.M. Rogers, Agenda-setting, 1996, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, p. 28. [xx] Joseph B. Treaster, “From Toys to TV, Drug Fight Grows,” New York Times, March 18, 1991,  http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/16/us/from-toys-to-tv-drug-fight-grows.html , accessed January 2017. [xxi]  “History/ HH&S By the Numbers,” Hollywood, Health & Society website,   https://hollywoodhealthandsociety.org/about-us/history-hhs-numbers , accessed February 2017.

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Home » Blog » How To Be the Designated Driver—and Still Have Fun

How To Be the Designated Driver—and Still Have Fun

  • Written By: Alicia Schultz
  • Updated: April 25, 2022

Table of Contents

When your friend group is planning on a night out, choosing a designated driver is essential. But if you’re the chosen DD, you may wonder, “What are the ground rules, and how will I still enjoy myself?”

Fortunately, there are plenty of fun things to do when you’re the designated driver. Below, we’ll cover the responsibilities of designated driving and how you can still have a great night—even without alcohol.

What Is a Designated Driver & Why Are They Important?

hand holding car keys

A designated driver (DD) is someone who chooses to stay sober on a night out so they can get everyone home safely.

Why Is It Important To Have a Designated Driver?

DDs are essential because they save lives, prevent injuries, and improve safety for their friends and other people on the road.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), one person dies every 52 minutes from drunk driving in the United States. DDs are heroes for helping prevent incidents like these and making the world a safer place.

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Schedule a private call with a Ria Health team member and we can help you get started.

What Is the Role of a Designated Driver?

A designated driver’s main role is to avoid drinking and ensure their friends get home without endangering themselves or others. This could also involve keeping an eye out for friends while still at the bar, but how actively the DD does this is up to their specific group.

If you want to know how to be a designated driver, it’s important to know the ground rules ahead of time. So, first things first: you should plan on not drinking any alcohol at all.

Can a DD Have One Drink?

Many people think a DD can still have a couple of drinks before driving, but this just isn’t the case. Research shows that only 0.02 percent blood alcohol content (BAC) can already impair your driving. This is only one – fourth the legal limit, and can happen after only one beer, depending on your body weight .

So, with that in mind, you’ll want to avoid drinking at all throughout the night, and come prepared with some ways to resist the temptation.

Staying Sober and Sticking to the Plan as the Designated Driver

Here are some tips for sticking with your responsibilities as DD, and ensuring the night goes smoothly:

  • Make sure you’ve got a valid driver’s license and auto insurance, and that your vehicle is in good working order.
  • Know what you’ll order at the bar. Sodas, mocktails, or nonalcoholic brews are all good options. If you think it will be too tempting to order something alcoholic, avoid sitting near the bar.
  • Create a game plan before anyone drinks. Discuss when you’ll leave and where you’ll meet at the end of the night. This way, your friends won’t get too drunk, and you won’t have to chase them around the bar or party when you’re ready to head home.

How To Have Fun Without Drinking

drunk crowd at a barn party

A challenging part of being the DD is figuring out how to still have fun —without alcohol. This can be especially tough if you aren’t used to being the sober one on a night out.

Luckily, you absolutely can have a good time without drinking. Here are some tips to help you make that happen:

  • Take advantage of the perks: Some bars offer free sodas and other beverages to designated drivers. Ask the bartender!
  • Help decide where the destination of the night will be. If you choose a place that you know you’ll still enjoy sober, you’ll be golden.
  • Team up with another designated driver or a person who isn’t drinking. It can help to have someone who isn’t drunk to chat with. You can even share a laugh if your friends get up to something silly.
  • You can still hang out with your buzzed friends. Play pool, darts, or dance to pass the time. And remember: you’ll be the one with stories to tell about your friends’ funny antics the next morning!

The Bottom Line on Being the Designated Driver

You’ve got a lot of responsibility when you’re the designated driver, but you can rest assured knowing you’re doing a good deed. And beyond that, your friends will thank you endlessly for making their night safe and enjoyable.

To ensure you stick to your responsibilities, plan the ways you’ll have fun and avoid the temptation to drink throughout the night. With a little preparation, you’re bound to have a good time!

Looking for a way to curb your drinking on a night out? Learn how an app can help you cut back on binge drinking—without having to identify as an alcoholic.

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6 Tips on Committing to a Designated Driving Plan

June 4, 2019

In the last several decades, the term “designated driver” has become a buzzword for responsible drinking. When friends go out, everyone should agree ahead of time that one person remains sober and is accountable for ensuring everyone gets home safely. However, not everyone understands entirely what it means to be a designated driver. Read on to get some tips about committing to a designated driver plan—and find out how to stick to it.

A Brief History of the Designated Drivers Movement

Designated drivers are a relatively recent phenomenon. Alcohol.org informs us that the Harvard Alcohol Project was launched in 1988 to address the epidemic of drunk driving accidents and fatalities the country still experiences—over one auto accident per hour occurs due to a drunk driver, according to the Centers for Disease Control or CDC.

The blog describes how the Harvard study introduced to the North American public mind the notion of a designated driver who would abstain from drinking while taking responsibility for getting others home safely.

Also, when MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) was created in 1980, it continued to spread the word about the importance of having a designated driver.

For more statistics on drunk driving in the US, consult this CDC fact sheet .

Tips on Committing to Designated Driving

At first, you may feel uncomfortable about being the only one in a group of drinkers not to drink. To make sure you and your friends stick to the plan, here are some tips to follow:

  • Remember that a designated driver agrees not to drink at all during the occasion. Even the smallest amount of alcohol could affect your ability to drive safely . The only safe amount of alcohol to have in your system before driving is ZERO. If you plan on being the designated driver, you should refrain from consuming alcohol and remain sober throughout the day,
  • Select the designated driver beforehand. Alcohol.org warns groups not to wait until the evening of drinking progresses to determine “who is the least intoxicated.” It’s a good idea to have a rotation schedule in a place where the designated driver changes each time, and nobody feels resentful of the role.
  • Don’t use any medication that could also impair your driving when you get behind the wheel , according to NIAAA , certain medicines contain up to 10% alcohol. Laxatives and cough syrup could have higher alcohol concentrations.
  • Bring a Plan B. In case you need help getting everyone home, have phone numbers of friends and loved ones handy, and names ride-share companies. The Alcohol.org blog also tells us there are professional designated drivers available in some areas.
  • Eat a large meal beforehand , the alcohol.org blog suggests. You’ll already be full and will be less tempted to drink. The blog makes the following suggestions based on drunk driving facts, as well:
  • Sit away from the bar, so you’re not distracted by it.
  • Drink flavored beverages like soda or flavored seltzer to have a glass in your hand. This measure will help avoid conversations about why you’re not drinking.
  • Take advantage of the hospitality of some drinking establishments which provide free, non-alcoholic beverages for designated drivers.
  • Keep yourself occupied and enjoy the social atmosphere by talking, meeting new people, engaging in games, and concentrating on having a good time.
  • Finally, keep your commitment as a designated driver for the evening. One night of abstaining from alcohol for the safety of your life and those of your friends is far less unpleasant than the consequences of drunk driving .
  • A final note: A sober driver may find themselves in the position of driving someone else’s vehicle equipped with an ignition interlock device, also known as an in-car breathalyzer. It’s vital that you know how to use the interlock device, as the owner will be held responsible for any information that is recorded on the device’s data log. If you are not sure how to use the interlock device, we recommend that you do not operate the vehicle.

RoadGuard Interlock specializes in providing and maintaining the highest quality of ignition interlock devices for drivers who are required by law to have one installed. If you have any questions about obtaining an ignition interlock and getting back on the road, please contact us .

*Links to any third-party websites herein are provided for your reference and convenience only. RoadGuard Interlock did not create nor develop and does not own any such third-party websites. RoadGuard Interlock does not endorse nor support the content of, nor any opinions stated in any such third-party website links. RoadGuard Interlock is not responsible for the content of any third-party website or its accuracy or reliability. Nothing contained in this article or in any such third-party website shall be considered legal advice or be deemed to constitute legal advice. For any legal advice concerning a DUI arrest, charge, conviction, or consequences thereof, you should contact an attorney of your choice.

What's Hot

The designated driver campaign: why it worked.

Associate Dean, Harvard School of Public Health

What are the ingredients for success in pro-social media campaigns?

This holiday season marks the "21st Birthday" of the U.S. Designated Driver Campaign , which was created by the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Health Communication in partnership with Hollywood's creative community and leading TV networks. This milestone offers a good opportunity to look back at the campaign, and to analyze the reasons for its success.

Launched in late 1988, the campaign sought to demonstrate how a new social concept -- the "designated driver" -- could be rapidly diffused through American society via mass communication, importing the concept from Scandinavia and catalyzing a fundamental shift in social norms relating to driving-after-drinking. Such a shift was essential for curbing alcohol-related traffic fatalities, the leading cause of death among young adults aged 15-24 in the U.S. Through this initiative, the Harvard School of Public Health became the architect of the "U.S. Designated Driver Campaign". All major Hollywood studios participated along with the ABC, CBS, and NBC television networks.

The project broke new ground when TV writers agreed to insert drunken driving prevention messages, including frequent references to designated drivers, into scripts of top-rated television programs, such as "Cheers," "L.A. Law," and "The Cosby Show." Entertainment not only mirrors social reality, but also helps shape it by depicting what constitutes popular opinion, by influencing people's perceptions of the roles and behaviors that are appropriate to members of a culture, and by modeling specific behaviors. The strength of this approach is that short messages, embedded within dialogue, are casually presented by characters who serve as role models within a dramatic context, facilitating social learning. The project's strategy was endorsed in a unanimous resolution of the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America, West. Over a four-year period, more than 160 prime-time programs incorporated sub-plots, scenes, and dialogue on the subject, including frequent references to the use of designated drivers.

At Harvard's request, ABC, CBS, and NBC also aired frequent public service announcements (PSAs) during prime time encouraging the use of designated drivers. This was the first time that the three networks produced and sponsored simultaneous campaigns with the same message. Harvard's public relations activities further reinforced the campaign, generating extensive news coverage. According to industry estimates, the campaign received over $100 million each year in network air time.

The campaign soon became transformed into a national movement as a broad range of prominent individuals (e.g., President George Bush, President Bill Clinton, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop); government agencies (e.g., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention); national organizations and advocacy groups (e.g., Mothers Against Drunk Driving); professional sports leagues (e.g., Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association); major corporations (e.g., State Farm Insurance); leading police departments; and brewers and distillers endorsed and promoted the designated driver concept.

"Designated driver" became a household phrase in the U.S. to such an extent that the term appeared in the 1991 Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Public opinion polls documented the rapid, wide acceptance and strong popularity of the designated driver concept. According to the Roper Poll, the proportion of Americans serving as a designated driver reached 37% in 1991. Among Americans under the age of 30, 52% had actually been a designated driver. Among frequent drinkers, 54% had been driven home by a designated driver. By 1998, according to the Roper Poll, a majority of adults who drink had served as a designated driver and/or been driven home by one. Among frequent drinkers who consumed five or more drinks in the past seven days, 62% had served as a designated driver and/or been driven home by one.

When the campaign began in late 1988, annual alcohol-related traffic fatalities stood at 23,626. By 1994, fatalities had declined by 30%. A variety of factors were responsible for this striking progress, including intensive publicity, new laws, and strict enforcement.

Why did the Designated Driver campaign succeed?

  • The campaign's message was narrowly focused, highly specific, and easily communicated. We did not attempt to take on the entirety of alcohol use and abuse in American society. Rather, we took a highly complex problem, broke it down into separate, manageable components, and selected one component where there seemed to be a meaningful opportunity to achieve change at the time.
  • The campaign's message called for only a modest shift in behavior. The message was not anti-alcohol. It said, "If you drink, take your turn as the Designated Driver."
  • Instead of a negative message ("Don't drink and drive"), the campaign promoted a positive, empowering message ("The Designated Driver is the Life of the Party.")
  • There was a broad social consensus about the need to address the problem of drunken driving, and there were no economic interests opposing the campaign; the alcoholic beverage industry gets a black eye from drunken driving, so they supported the effort.
  • The timing was right. Mothers Against Drunken Driving (MADD) had spent eight years building a foundation of public understanding, concern, and support. So, the general public was primed and ready to respond. On the other hand, media attention to the problem had declined sharply by 1988 and there was a need for a fresh, new idea to rejuvenate the anti-drunken driving movement.
  • It was a relatively easy step for the Hollywood creative community to support the campaign. Writers were already depicting alcohol use, so it didn't take much heavy lifting to insert a reference to driving in connection with drinking. The Designated Driver message could be incorporated with a line or two of dialogue, and did not require major changes in character development or the story line.
  • The issue of drunken driving hit close to home for many members of the Hollywood community whose teenage children were potentially at risk. And, for many others in the creative community, alcoholism had touched the lives of a family member or friend; they were eager to help address any aspect of alcohol abuse. The issue had personal relevance for them.
  • The campaign had the strong, sustained support of a leading member of the Hollywood community--Grant Tinker, former chairman of NBC and a prominent TV producer--who was held in enormously high regard by his peers. The campaign assembled an Advisory Board of key individuals in the Hollywood community, who were recruited with Grant Tinker's leadership, to provide ready access to a broad array of directors, writers, producers, and actors who could help the campaign. The campaign also won formal endorsements from the boards of the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild.
  • The campaign did not rely on the intermediary of a public relations agency, which might have diminished the effort's credibility. Harvard staff spent 25 work weeks in Hollywood meeting individually with 250 key people in the Hollywood community. The campaign asked for Hollywood's support, but didn't demand it, and was deeply respectful of the community's core value of creative freedom.
  • To capture and sustain the attention and interest of the creative community, the campaign employed a dozen different tactics to follow-up after face-to-face meetings. Without a steady drumbeat of messaging directed at Hollywood, the odds were low that supportive members of the creative community would remember to act on their stated intentions.

Notwithstanding the progress achieved to date, some 13,000 people will lose their lives this year in an alcohol-related crash. So, if you plan to drink on New Year's Eve, make sure you choose a Designated Driver who doesn't drink at all. And, don't be shy about intervening to stop a friend or relative from driving after drinking. You could save a life.

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The Designated Driver

By jerald walker.

I arrived at the faculty meeting as a few hundred students stormed the room, chanting about campus-wide racism, demanding justice. Most of the students were white, there to support their black peers as they aired grievances. After a while some of the speakers began to cry, which fueled my growing unease. The offenses struck me as minor, the kinds of slights that I, thirty years ago, as a black student who had also attended an overwhelmingly white university, merely brushed aside, things like coeds requesting to touch my hair, and faculty asking if I were there because of a racial quota. Annoying, to be sure, but not demonstration-worthy, not tear-worthy, not worthy of the bullhorn a young man kept bringing to his lips to shout, “The racism ends now !” And each time he did I responded, mentally, that the racism will surely continue, and if you expect to transcend it you will all need to stiffen your spines.

But spines could not stiffen, I conceded, without a certain weight to bear. I conceded, too, that the weight of weight was relative; perhaps having white coeds ask to touch your hair in 2014—particularly at an elite, private institution, where one year’s tuition costs more than my first home—was the equivalent of being required, sixty years ago, to ride Jim Crow. Maybe sixty years hence, black hair touching would evoke uniform outrage at how inhumanely man once treated his fellow man. I would be long dead by then, so it was a question that would have to be answered by today’s youth, including my two sons, whose spines, like the spines of the black students before me, were as soft as Jell-O.

My sons were twelve and fourteen. No one had asked to touch their hair yet, though the opportunity abounded, as the town we lived in was ninety-eight percent white. The town was also wealthy, so it was possible that some of our neighbors attributed our presence to a government program, one designed to ensure one black family per every three thousand homes. No one had asked my sons about racial quotas either. But I worried about how they would respond to questions such as those. I worried about their spines. Having been spared the impoverished, inner-city experience of my childhood, where the social and economic impact of racism was constant and brutal, would they one day find themselves shouting into bullhorns too, aggrieved, say, by the lack of minorities in the cast of La Traviata or their white sommelier’s poor choice of Burgundy?

The only racism either of them had experienced occurred a decade ago: a girl in my oldest son’s preschool class told him people with his skin color were stinky. The comment was hurtful, but not enduring; within hours he had forgotten it. I, obviously, had not, having instantly recognized the girl for what she was: the fuse leading to the bomb of high school, where the cruelty of four-year-olds met their match in teens. And so when Adrian started his freshman year, I decided to be his designated driver. That way, I reasoned, when he was inevitably embroiled in some racial conflict, our fifteen minutes alone together in the car each morning would be ideal for talking it through.

But eight months had come and gone, and there had been nothing to talk through. It occurred to me, though, while watching the protest, that I could tell Adrian about the students’ complaints and then compare them to challenges I had faced in my youth, incidents of police brutality, for instance, or that time I was chased by white teens carrying sticks. It would be a stark departure from our usual discussion of our classes, or the silly dreams I claimed to have had but actually concocted simply to amuse him, but it would provide an important context for dealing with his conflicts to come. So the next morning, midway into our drive, I cleared my throat and said, “There’s something we need to talk about.” I glanced to my right, just as he dug his hand into the box of Cheerios on his lap, looking, for all the world, like the toddler I once pushed on the swings. And then I watched his blank expression blossom into a smile as I made up a dream about our cats fighting and defeating a vulture. I would talk about the protest tomorrow, I told myself. But I did not do it then either.

I did, however, talk about it with my colleagues. It was the talk of the whole college, it seemed, especially after our paper ran it as a feature story. Then the Boston Globe and the Huffington Post carried it, as well as a few other media outlets, each one highlighting the students’ primary demand: cultural competency training for the entire campus community. Most of the faculty I spoke with enthusiastically supported the idea, and it was fun to watch them flinch when I deadpanned that they would have to learn Ebonics. I made this joke several times during the week after the protest, and I was about to make it again at a dinner party with seven of my colleagues, but then someone mentioned how heartbreaking it was to see the students crying and the mood turned somber.

“I could have just hugged the one girl,” someone remarked.

“Which one?”

“The one who said the college had broken her spirit.”

“Yes, yes. So sad .”

“But what were they going on about their hair for?” someone else asked. “I couldn’t follow that part.”

Other than myself and a Cuban American, everyone there was white, so it fell to me to explain that, for some white people, black hair was a great curiosity, compelling them to want to touch it.

“For what purpose?”

“To see what it feels like,” I said.

“Have whites asked to touch your hair before?”

“On occasion. But my sisters were asked all the time when they were in college. It’s more of a phenomenon among females.”

One person said, “How fascinating.”

“I had no idea,” responded another.

I said, “You’ll learn more about it in your Ebonics class.”

The doorbell rang. One of the guests said it was his wife, who had planned to join us, and a moment later he returned with her at his side. I liked his wife. She was from Poland and her perspective on American culture was often unique and provocative. Right now, for instance, as expressions of sympathy for the crying students resumed, she went against the grain by calling them coddled. “That’s right,” she continued, as my colleagues gaped at her, “coddled.”

“How dare you say that?” someone exclaimed. “I mean, how dare you? ”

“I dare,” she said, “because it’s true. And you’re all pathetic for being moved by their petty complaints.”

“Their complaints weren’t petty,” I said, despite my view that they were. But there was something about hearing another person say it that bothered me.

“Petty complaints,” she forged on, “made by coddled babies.” Several of my colleagues rose to the students’ defense, but she held her ground. “They’ve probably never experienced real racism in their lives.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that privileged black kids are somehow insulated against racism?”

“I’m saying what the students experienced wasn’t worth crying about.” Then she launched into descriptions of various hardships she had endured in her native land, offering the totalitarian version of the story I had intended to give to Adrian. “ And yet ,” she said when she finished, “we didn’t cry about it.”

“This isn’t Poland,” I said, “and these aren’t your kids.”

“Nor are they yours.“

“But they could be,” I snapped, though what I was thinking was that they were. My hands were trembling, I realized, and I tried to steady them by pressing my palms against the table. But that did not work because my Cuban colleague, no doubt recalling the communism of his youth, suddenly announced that he thought the complaints were petty too, triggering a heated argument that got everyone involved. Tempers flared, voices were raised, names were called and, inevitably, accusations of racism were leveled, which brought the argument to an abrupt end.

I rose from the table and went to the patio for some air. A couple of my colleagues joined me with the foresight to bring wine and glasses. For fifteen minutes we drank and expressed our outrage at what we had heard, riling each other up to the point where the thought of remaining at the party any longer was inconceivable. The Pole must have reached the same conclusion; when we filed back inside the hostess was handing her and her husband their jackets. Two colleagues were across the room on the couch, the stark turn of events, I assumed, the source of their stunned expressions. The Cuban was near them on a chair staring into space. He rose when he saw me and gently rested a hand on my shoulder. “Listen, Jerald,” he said, “I don’t know how things escalated so fast, but I got caught up in the emotion of it all and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m pretty sure I offended you, and I deeply regret that. I’m sorry.” Smiling faintly, he widened his arms for a hug, which my anger nearly prevented me from accepting. Over his shoulder, the Pole and her husband, jackets on now, said goodbye to the hostess, and then left. A moment later, the remaining guests followed suit.

I was thirty minutes from home. During the drive my anger waxed rather than waned, mainly because I called my wife and recounted the argument several times over before she told me she was going to bed. She was asleep when I arrived, so I was left to recount it alone for the four hours it took me to finally doze off. When I climbed out of bed an hour later to drive Adrian to school, I was exhausted and irritable.

“Did you have another strange dream?” he asked.

I had just pulled out of our garage and was creeping toward the busy street that ran by our house. As I waited for a chance to merge into the flow of vehicles, I tried to come up with something, but I just did not have the energy or will. “No,” I said. “I didn’t really sleep.”

“Too upset.”

“With one of your students?”

“No, a couple of friends.”

There was a break in the traffic and I pulled forward. For a while neither of us spoke, though mentally I was still at the party, yelling and being yelled at.

“Maybe you should talk about it,” Adrian said.

“About what?”

“Why you’re upset.” He opened the lid of his Cheerios box and inserted his hand. “It might make you feel better.”

It would not make me feel better. Besides, to explain the fight I would have to explain the protest, which I did not want to do for fear of being critical of the students, which was to say critical of a future him. But I had to say something or I would have seemed dismissive of his concern. I proceeded with caution and vagueness. “Some students at my college staged a protest,” I began. “My friends criticized them, and we argued about it.”

“Why were the students protesting?”

“They don’t like how they’re being treated by some faculty and other students.”

“Why did your friends criticize them?”

“They think the students’ complaints are petty.”

After a short pause, Adrian said, “I’m glad you don’t think that.”

I wanted to let that stand, as if doing so was no more dishonest than concocting strange dreams, as if he were someone at a dinner party instead of my son. “I do think they’re petty,” I said, “but the thing is, maybe it doesn’t matter what I think. Maybe what matters is what the students think, and the fact that they stood up for themselves. That’s not always easy, you know. Actually, I’m proud of them. What they did took courage.”

“Like it took for you to defend them,” he said.

“Well … ”

“You should be proud of yourself too, Daddy. I’m proud of you.”

I looked at him. He plunged his hand back into the box and pulled out a fist full of cereal. A few of the grains fell to his lap and the floor as he stuffed the rest into his mouth. I turned back to the road, blinking it into focus. In the silence that ensued, my thoughts returned to the party. It was just after the fight, as everyone prepared to leave, and I let myself imagine apologizing to the Pole, as the Cuban had to me. We have similar views , I told her, and I understand the point you were making, but my emotions got the best of me, as they often do when it comes to my sons. I wished I had said these things to her, and relayed them to Adrian. That was an act of courage , I could have explained. Not to be confused with an act of love.

Excerpt from Jerald Walker’s How to Make a Slave and Other Essays , used by permission of Mad Creek Books, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press.

For more on this essay, read the interview “ No Angel with a Pen: Jerald Walker talks with Harvard Review .”

Published on June 10, 2020

First published in Harvard Review 50

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How to Choose a Designated Driver

Last Updated: October 11, 2022

This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff . Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. This article has been viewed 15,635 times.

Any time that a group of people goes out to drink, whether it's a planned celebration or an informal meeting, having a designated driver is important. Designated drivers play a vital role in decreasing roadway accidents and helping everyone get home safely. By selecting the right driver, confirming your plan, and creating a backup plan, you can ensure that you will get home safely.

Selecting the Right Driver

Step 1 Choose a licensed driver.

  • Ask the driver about their driving record if you have any questions about their age or driving eligibility.

Step 2 Select a driver randomly.

  • Try random selection methods such as drawing names out of a hat.

Step 3 Make sure that you have enough drivers for the group.

  • If someone offers you a drink when you are the designated driver be sure to inform them that you are serving as your group's designated driver. Say something like, “I won't be drinking tonight since I am serving as the designated driver for my friends.”

Confirming the Plan

Step 1 Select your designated driver before you begin drinking.

Creating a Backup Plan

Step 1 Call a taxi.

  • Call a cab when your designated driver has also had too much to drink or has left the party.
  • Call a cab when you are alone and have not designated a driver to get you home.

Step 2 Use public transportation.

  • Remember to tip your driver as many of them are volunteers.
  • Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have designated driver services available in each county.
  • Dryver is a designated driver service that provides a website and app to help you find a designated driver.

Step 4 Have a designated friend or family member on speed dial.

Expert Q&A

  • Always make a plan before you start drinking. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
  • Keep a list of phone numbers available to call if you need a driver. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
  • Never drink and drive. It puts you and others at a risk of injury or death. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1
  • Sometimes your designated driver will not act responsibly. Always have a backup plan. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1

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  • ↑ https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/designated-drivers-you-are-not-alone

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Designated drivers are people who agree not to drink so they can drive their friends who have been drinking. Formal designated driver programs in drinking establishments provide incentives such as free soft drinks for people who agree to be designated drivers. Usually, designated driver arrangements are completely informal. Surveys show that nearly all U.S. drivers agree that having a designated driver is important, and that 72% have served as one themselves (Wicklund et al., 2018).

The designated driver concept has been questioned on two grounds: (1) designated drivers may still drink, though perhaps less than the passengers; and (2) it may encourage passengers to drink to excess. Previous national roadside surveys found self-identified designated drivers were more likely to have a positive BAC in comparison to all drivers on the road (Lacey et al., 2009). A systematic review by CDC found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of designated driver programs (Ditter et al., 2005). A review from Australia concluded that designated driver programs can successfully increase awareness and use of designated drivers, but evidence for changes in alcohol-related crashes is inconclusive (Nielson & Watson, 2009). Generally, the research support is stronger for alternative transportation programs (Fell et al., 2020).

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  • designated driver

a person who abstains from alcoholic beverages at a gathering in order to be fit to drive companions home safely. Abbreviation : DD

Origin of designated driver

Words nearby designated driver.

  • desideratum
  • designated employment
  • designated hitter
  • designation

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use designated driver in a sentence

She told him that she was usually the designated driver and never had a sip of alcohol before she was 21.

Choose carefully and make sure you have a designated driver .

British Dictionary definitions for designated driver

a person who volunteers not to drink alcohol on a social occasion, so that he or she can safely drive other people who have been drinking

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Characteristics of Designated Drivers and their Passengers from the 2007 National Roadside Survey in the United States

Gwen bergen.

Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 4770 Buford Highway NE, Atlanta, GA MS F62, vog.cdc@negreBG

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland, USA, Calverton Office Park, 11720 Beltsville Drive, Suite 900, Calverton, MD 20705-3111, gro.erip@oayj

Ruth A. Shults

Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 4770 Buford Highway NE, Atlanta, GA MS F62, vog.cdc@stluhSR

Eduardo Romano

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland, USA, Calverton Office Park, 11720 Beltsville Drive, Suite 900, Calverton, MD 20705-3111, gro.erip@onamor

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland, USA, Calverton Office Park, 11720 Beltsville Drive, Suite 900, Calverton, MD 20705-3111, gro.erip@yecal

The objectives of this study were to estimate the prevalence of designated driving in the United States, compare these results with those from the 1996 National Roadside Survey, and explore the demographic, drinking, and trip characteristics of both designated drivers and their passengers.

The data used were from the 2007 National Roadside Survey which randomly stopped drivers, administered breath tests for alcohol, and administered a questionnaire to drivers and front seat passengers.

Almost a third (30%) of nighttime drivers reported being designated drivers, with 84% of them having a blood alcohol concentration of zero. Drivers who were more likely to be designated drivers were those with a blood alcohol concentration that was over zero but still legal, who were under 35 years of age, who were African-American, Hispanic or Asian, and whose driving trip originated at a bar, tavern, or club. Over a third of passengers of designated drivers reported consuming an alcoholic drink the day of the survey compared with a fifth of passengers of non-designated drivers. One-fifth of designated driver passengers who reported drinking consumed five or more drinks that day.

Conclusions

Designated driving is widely used in the United States, with the majority of designated drivers abstaining from drinking alcohol. However as designated driving separates drinking from driving for passengers in a group travelling together, this may encourage passengers to binge drink, which is associated with many adverse health consequences in addition to those arising from alcohol-impaired driving. Designated driving programs and campaigns, although not proven to be effective when used alone, can complement proven effective interventions to help reduce excessive drinking and alcohol-impaired driving.

INTRODUCTION

Approximately one-third of all traffic fatalities in the United States involve at least one driver with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or higher, the illegal threshold for adult drivers in the United States ( NHTSA, 2012 ). Two-thirds of these fatalities occur among the alcohol-impaired drivers themselves, and another 17% occur among passengers riding with the alcohol-impaired driver. One popular approach to addressing alcohol-impaired driving is the use of a “designated driver.” When a group is traveling together in a motor vehicle for activities that include drinking alcohol, the designated driver is a member of the group who, ideally, is chosen before any drinking begins and abstains from drinking in order to drive other groups members home safely. ( Ditter, 2005 ).

While the concept of a designated driver is widely accepted, there are relatively few evaluations of designated driving interventions. In 2003, a systematic review conducted for the Community Preventive Services Task Force found that there was insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of the designated driver intervention and identified the following issues ( Task Force, 2012a ):

  • Designated drivers do not always abstain from alcohol, although the driver’s BAC may still be below the illegal threshold.
  • Passengers of the designated driver may drink greater amounts of alcohol than they would if they did not have a designated driver.

Results from the 1996 National Roadside Survey (NRS) confirmed that some individuals consume alcohol while serving as a designated driver; 15% of designated drivers had a positive but legal BAC and 3.3% had a BAC over the illegal limit ( Fell, 1997 ). A 2007 study, conducted in Washington State, reported that 36% of the 21–34 year olds surveyed consumed one to two drinks the last time they served as a designated driver, while 3% consumed three or more drinks ( Rivara, 2007 ). Studies of whether passengers of designated drivers drink more than they otherwise would report mixed results. Almost half of the 21–34 year olds in the above mentioned Washington State survey reported that they drank more as a passenger of a designated driver than they normally would ( Rivara, 2007 ). Of those who drank more when a passenger of a designated driver, half drank one to two more drinks, with the remainder drinking three or more additional drinks. However, a separate study focusing on groups of students leaving bars and nightclubs in a college town found that the BACs of passengers of designated drivers were no higher than BACs of passengers who did not have a designated driver ( Timmerman, 2003 ).

The 2007 National Roadside Survey (NRS) provides an opportunity to re-examine the use of designated driving in the U.S ( Lacey, 2009 ). The purposes of this study are to estimate the prevalence of designated driving; and to explore the demographic, drinking, and trip characteristics of both designated drivers and their passengers. These results are also compared to the results from the 1996 NRS.

The 2007 National Roadside Survey recruited 9,094 drivers from 60 representative jurisdictions across the United States. The drivers represent a national sample of noncommercial vehicle drivers aged 16 and older on U.S. roads on Friday and Saturday from 10 pm to midnight, Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 am to 3:00 am, and Friday during the daytime periods of 9:30 to 11:30 am and 1:30 to 3:30 pm. The survey methods are fully described elsewhere ( Lacey et al, 2009 ; Lacey et al, 2011 ). Briefly, drivers provided self-report data on driver and trip characteristics including whether the driver was serving as a designated driver on this trip, and preliminary breath tests for estimating BAC. Most drivers (7,721) also provided oral fluid samples for drug testing; 2,358 of the drivers who provided oral samples had at least one passenger older than 16 years. While these drivers were providing the oral fluid sample, a subset of the front-seat passengers older than 16 years were invited to complete a short questionnaire ( Romano at al., 2012 ). The passenger questionnaire was not part of the original NRS design but was implemented early in the data collection phase after it was noticed that passengers were waiting idle while the drivers provided the oral fluid sample ( Romano at al., 2012 ). As a result, 1,940 (82%) of the eligible 2,358 front seat passengers were approached, and 1,522 (65% of the eligible passengers) agreed to complete the self-administered pencil and paper questionnaire ( Romano et al., 2012 ). One hundred seventy-two (2%) of the 9,094 drivers did not answer the designated driver question, so they and their 15 passengers were excluded from the analyses, resulting in a study population of 8,922 drivers and 1,507 passengers. Because some of the passengers did not provide complete information, the final sample sizes for passenger-related analyses vary depending on the variables under study.

A driver was considered to be a designated driver if he/she answered yes to the question “Tonight/Today, are you, or have you been, a designated driver?” If a driver who answered yes to this question had a passenger who agreed to fill out the passenger survey, that person was considered to be the passenger of a designated driver. Drivers who answered “no” to the designated driver question were the comparison group of non-designated drivers, and their passengers who agreed to fill out the passenger survey were considered the passengers of non-designated drivers.

Measure of BAC

The driver’s BAC was measured by a preliminary breath test (PBT) device; BACs were obtained for 95% of the study participants. For those without a PBT reading, a BAC was imputed based on the Passive Alcohol Sensor (PAS) reading obtained from the vehicle, and other relevant variables including driver age and gender, time of the day, trip origin, and trip destination ( Romano et al., 2012 ).

Designated drivers were compared with non-designated drivers in terms of demographic, drinking, and trip characteristics (i.e., gender, age, race, BAC, time of the day, and trip origin). Similar comparisons were made between passengers of designated drivers and those of non-designated drivers, which examined demographics (gender, age, race), as well as alcohol consumption on the day of the trip (i.e., anything to drink, number of drinks consumed, and number of drinks intending to consume). For both analyses, weighted proportions and confidence intervals were calculated based on weights that would bring the estimates from NRS to national estimates ( Lacey et al., 2009 ). Multivariate logistic regression modeling was conducted to estimate the independent contribution of each characteristic to the likelihood of being a designated driver. First, we constructed separate models for drivers surveyed during daytime and nighttime hours to see if characteristics associated with being a designated driver varied by time of day. Results of the two models did not differ substantially, so we combined all of the observations into one model and included a variable for time of day in the model. Both crude and adjusted prevalence ratios were calculated from odds ratios produced by the logistic regression models, using the approach suggested by Cummings (2009) . The analysis was conducted using STATA 11 (StataCorp LP, College Station, Texas) to account for the survey’s multistage sampling design as well as incorporating weights in the estimation.

Prevalence and Characteristics of Designated Drivers

Twenty-seven percent of drivers on daytime and nighttime trips combined, and 30% of the nighttime drivers in the 2007 National Roadside Survey, reported being designated drivers. Of those who reported being designated drivers, 41% did not have a passenger in the car when they were stopped for the survey. Overall, 87% of designated drivers had a BAC of zero ( Table 1 ); for those surveyed at night, 84% had a BAC of zero (data not shown). Ninety-two percent of non-designated drivers had a zero BAC, and the proportion did not differ by the time of day of the survey. Designated drivers were more likely than non-designated drivers to have a legal, non-zero BAC of < 0.08 g/dL (11% versus 7%), whereas 2% of both groups had a BAC of ≥ 0.08 g/dL.

Characteristics of participants identifying as designated drivers compared with non-designated drivers, 2007

Almost half (47%) of designated drivers were ages 21 to 34 years, compared with just over a third (36%) of non-designated drivers. Designated drivers ages 21 to 34 years were less likely to have a zero BAC (82%) compared to those ages 35 and older (92%, p<.01) and those ages 20 and younger (86%, p=0.18) (data not shown). There were differences by race/ethnicity in the proportion of drivers reporting to be designated drivers; 21% of all White drivers were designated drivers, whereas 29% to 34% of all minorities (African American, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian) drivers were designated drivers (data not shown).

Multivariate regression analysis indicated that drivers with a positive BAC below the illegal threshold were 30% more likely to be a designated driver compared to drivers with a BAC of 0.00 g/dL when controlling for gender, age, race, time of day, and trip origination ( Table 2 ). Drivers under 35 years old were 30-40% more likely to be designated drivers compared to older drivers. African American, Hispanic, or Asian drivers were 50-60% more likely to be designated drivers compared to White drivers. Trips originating at a bar, tavern, or club were 80% more likely to have a designated driver compared to trips originating at home, whereas those originating at work were 30% less likely to have a designated driver. We examined designated drivers with multiple passengers versus those with one passenger and found that those with multiple passengers were more likely to be younger; African-American, Hispanic, or American Indian/Alaskan Native; and were more likely to have a trip originating at a bar, restaurant or someone else’s home (data not shown).

NOTE: The sample size was reduced from 8922 to 8838, because some drivers did not answer all the questions on their characteristics and were excluded from analyses.

Characteristics of Passengers of Designated Drivers

In total, 65% of passengers were female, and the proportion of passengers that was female did not differ substantially between vehicles with a designated driver and vehicles without ( Table 3 ). Passengers of designated drivers were more likely than those of non-designated drivers to have had one or more alcoholic drinks on the day of the interview (35% versus 20%). Alcohol consumption differed by age for passengers of designated drivers; 43% of those ages 21 to 34 years had consumed alcohol compared with 28% of those aged under 21 years (p<.05) and 21% of those aged 35 years and older (p<.01) (data not shown). Twenty-five percent of passengers of designated drivers intended to have one or more drinks compared with 11% of the passengers of non-designated drivers ( Table 3 ). Approximately 20% of passengers of designated drivers who reported that they had consumed alcohol had five or more drinks the day of the survey compared with 1% of passengers of non-designated drivers.

Characteristics of passengers of designated drivers compared to passengers of non-designated drivers, 2007

When comparing the results of the 2007 NRS with those of the 1996 NRS, we found that, in 2007, 30% of nighttime drivers reported being a designated driver, whereas in 1996, 25% of nighttime drivers reported doing so ( Fell, 1997 ). In 2007, 84% of nighttime designated drivers registered a BAC of zero, an increase of 2 percentage points over the 1996 NRS results. These results suggest that the concept of designated driving remained popular over the decade from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s and that the majority of designated drivers heed the advice to remain alcohol free.

This study found that young adults ages 21-34 years old were most likely to serve as designated drivers and, among designated drivers, these young adults were most likely to have a non-zero BAC. These finding are generally consistent with other designated driving and alcohol-impaired driving surveys (Moulton, 2012, Bergen, 2011 ). Although most of young adult designated drivers who drink do so at legal levels, their risk of being in a fatal crash increases well before their BAC reaches 0.08 g/dL. Indeed, the relative risk of being in a fatal crash for drivers between the ages of 21 and 34 with a BAC of 0.02-0.079 g/dL is 3-10 times that of sober drivers of the same age ( Voas, 2012 ).

A finding of particular concern in this study was that 14% of designated drivers under 21 years of age had a BAC greater than zero, although driving after consuming any amount of alcohol is illegal for this age group. Young people who drive after consuming any amount of alcohol pose an inordinate risk to themselves, their passengers, and other road users. It is estimated that for each 0.02 g/dL increase in BAC, the relative risk of a driver ages 16-20 dying in a crash more than doubles ( Voas 2012 ). Additionally, 28% of underage passengers of designated drivers had consumed alcohol that day. Designated driving may send mixed messages that drinking is acceptable as long as you don’t drive to those who are not yet legally old enough to purchase or publically consume alcohol as media promoting designated driving isn’t targeted solely towards adults ( DeJong, 1992 ).

Several factors may influence whether or not a designated driver abstains from drinking. If he/she is selected after the drinking session begins, the designated driver may be the person thought to be least impaired rather than the group member who agrees to abstain from drinking ( Ditter, 2005 ). Vehicle ownership may also influence decision making as several studies suggest that the vehicle owner may be more likely to serve as the designated driver even if he/she is not the least intoxicated in the group ( Lange, 2000 ; Romano, 2012 ). Interventions to promote designated drivers should emphasize selecting the designated driver prior to when drinking begins and selecting the designated driver based on his/her agreement to abstain from consuming alcohol.

While it was not possible to determine whether passengers of designated drivers drank more on these trips than they normally would, this study found that passengers of designated drivers were more likely to plan to have additional drinks compared to passengers of non-designated drivers. Of special concern is that one-fifth of the passengers of designated drivers who had consumed alcohol that day reported consuming five or more drinks– a level that is considered binge drinking ( Kanny, 2012 ). Although these impaired passengers were not driving, their behavior could be distracting to the designated driver. ( Rothe, 2009 ) Additionally, binge drinking has many negative health consequences besides impaired driving ( Kanny, 2012 ; Smith, 1999 ) including enhancing risk of violence, suicide, drowning, and other injuries.

Asians, Hispanics, and African-Americans were more likely to be designated drivers than Whites. Separate studies have indicated that White drivers are less likely to perceive that they would be stopped for driving under the influence compared to other races ( Beck, 2009 ; Debnam, 2011 ). Minority drivers may perceive that they are more likely to be stopped by the police; therefore, may be more likely to utilize designated drivers.

One limitation to this study is that almost half (41%) of the drivers who identified as a designated driver did not have a passenger in the car when stopped for the survey. Potentially, the passenger may have been dropped off, making this trip a valid designated driver trip. However, some drivers may have misunderstood the question which would indicate that the estimate of 30% of nighttime trips having a designated driver is high. Also, if the designated driving trip ended prior to the interview, and the driver was on a different trip, the passenger in the car may be misclassified as a passenger of a designated driver. To explore the potential effect of this possible misclassification, analyses were conducted comparing designated drivers with a passenger present in the car to those who did not have a passenger. No substantive differences were found. Another possible limitation is that none of the sampling unit locations for the NRS were located in the upper mid-western and western states, including several states with the highest levels of self-reported alcohol-impaired driving ( Bergen, 2011 ). This concern is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the sampling frame for this study was based on the carefully selected stratified random sample of the National Analysis Sampling System (NASS) of NHTSA, which is intended to be representative of crash involved drivers in the contiguous 48 states. The upper mid-western and western states are less present in this sample because of their lower volume of crashes. Finally, no data were collected on how much time had passed since the trip started so it is possible that measured BACs were lower than when the driver started the trip.

This study confirmed that the use of designated drivers remains popular in the United States, and that most designated drivers do not drink. Widespread use of proven effective strategies, such as sobriety checkpoints, can complement designated driving by reinforcing the concept of a non-impaired driver ( Task Force, 2012a ). Designated driving, by separating drinking from driving, may result in the passengers of designated drivers consuming more alcohol than is healthy ( DeJong, 1992 ). Effective interventions to reduce drinking quantity include limiting alcohol outlet density, increasing the price of alcohol, and holding alcohol retailers liable for harms related to the sale of alcoholic beverages to minors and intoxicated patrons (dram shop liability and increasing the price of alcohol ) ( Task Force, 2012b ). Additionally, enforcement of minimum legal drinking age laws directly addresses the problem of underage drinking ( Task Force, 2012a ). Designated driving programs and campaigns, although not proven to be effective when used alone, ( Task Force, 2012a ) can complement proven effective interventions such as those mentioned to help reduce excessive drinking and alcohol-impaired driving.

Acknowledgements

The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the CDC

Contributor Information

Gwen Bergen, Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 4770 Buford Highway NE, Atlanta, GA MS F62, vog.cdc@negreBG .

Jie Yao, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland, USA, Calverton Office Park, 11720 Beltsville Drive, Suite 900, Calverton, MD 20705-3111, gro.erip@oayj .

Ruth A. Shults, Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 4770 Buford Highway NE, Atlanta, GA MS F62, vog.cdc@stluhSR .

Eduardo Romano, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland, USA, Calverton Office Park, 11720 Beltsville Drive, Suite 900, Calverton, MD 20705-3111, gro.erip@onamor .

John Lacey, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland, USA, Calverton Office Park, 11720 Beltsville Drive, Suite 900, Calverton, MD 20705-3111, gro.erip@yecal .

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I was my dad's designated driver when I was 12. Now that I'm older, I understand his pain.

  • My dad grew up on the US-Mexico border in a house on the banks of the Rio Grande.
  • When I was about 12, my mom would send me with him when he went drinking so I could drive back.
  • He taught me how beautiful life could be despite the pain and overwork he experienced growing up.

Insider Today

On weekend afternoons, when my dad announced that he was going to visit his parents who lived in Madero, Texas, we knew he was going to the cantinas.

A working-class Mexican-American, my dad jokingly called beer life's "shock absorbers." Mom never saw the humor and always forced me to go with him.

I knew I was tossed into his truck as a kind of deterrent. But I ended up being his designated driver. Never mind that I was only 12 or 13, too young for a learner's permit, and so puny I barely reached the gas pedal.

He grew up on the US-Mexico border

My dad was born on the river in a house on the banks of the Rio Grande . He lived in company housing that was part of my grandfather's job as a "pompero," maintaining pumps that drew water from the river and into the network of levees and irrigation canals that turned our arid region on the US-Mexico border into an agricultural powerhouse. My dad labored in those fields as a child to help the family, and he'd tell me about the drops of pesticide that fell on his bare arms when crop dusters flew overhead as they worked.

He grew up a scrawny brown kid in the '50s, a time in South Texas when the downtown movie theaters were segregated, and at least one restaurant had a sign that read "No dogs and No Mexicans." The public pool, Crystal Waters, would only let in the kids like him on Sundays when it was going to be drained and cleaned at the end of the day.

I sat in his truck, waiting for him to come out from drinking

I spent my Sundays sitting in the cab of his Chevy F150, parked outside cantinas with the windows rolled down in the Texas heat. Or maybe that was just the cicadas. At that age, I had no idea what a privilege it was to feel bored with nothing to do except wait for my life to start. I sat in the truck, sweaty thighs stuck to the hot vinyl seat, studying each man who went in and out of the joint. My dad never invited me inside. And I knew better than to go in and interrupt. So I waited until he stumbled out and told me to get behind the wheel to drive us home.

Not that my dad offered much instruction other than tell me to "take the scenic route." He meant the unpaved back roads, avoiding the main streets of our hometown, best known as the birthplace of the Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry.

I drove, fearful of the faded crosses on the sides of the road, markings where unlucky drivers had met their end. And when I drove along the levees, I felt a strange pull from the murky depths of the water flowing past, beckoning me to drive into it with a splash.

I don't know how I was able to relax and see, finally, the land. The vast fields were planted in rows that somehow hypnotized you with their precision. Groves of oranges and ruby-red grapefruits that we were known for. Sugarcane was burned at harvest and filled the sky with black ash that fell on the school playground miles away.

And just beyond the dash was the glorious, unobstructed view of Mexico. I seized up whenever I saw a plume of dust trailing a lone vehicle, which always turned out to be Migra in drab olive-colored Border Patrol vans. There are rusty-looking fences up now, and the Migra drive white Tahoes that blind under the merciless sun.

I learned so much about my dad without realizing it

It would be years before my dad told me about his life, the river, the cotton fields, and the cruel signs downtown. He dropped out of high school to enlist in the Army, where he first heard the word "spic." The racism continued to dog him when he worked as a telephone repairman for Southwestern Bell and dealt with irate customers who snarled, "Go back to your country!"

My dad must've been in his late 30s at the time of our drives, which seems so impossibly young to me now, with me in my 50s and him seven years gone. I want to believe that he wanted me to see our world. This was our country. Is. And how beautiful it could be despite the pain, labor, and overwork. And yet it's no wonder he reached for those shock absorbers to help him cope.

was designated driver

  • Main content

A landmark case? Takeaways from Trump's immunity claim at Supreme Court

The high court's decision to hear the case will delay his potential trial on charges he tried to steal the 2020 election. but experts say the ruling could still allow a verdict before election day..

  • The Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump's claim of immunity the week of April 22, which will further delay a trial that had been set in March.
  • Trump contends presidents must have immunity from prosecution or they could be extorted with the threat of prosecution while in office.

WASHINGTON − Former President Donald Trump welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to hear his argument for immunity from federal charges he tried to steal the 2020 election , but legal experts feared a broad protection from prosecution after leaving office could turn presidents into dictators .

The high court’s decision to hear the landmark case in April will delay the high-profile criminal trial for months. It's unclear whether the delay will push the trial beyond the November election.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the charges are politically motivated. If he returns to the White House, he could appoint an attorney general who would seek to dismiss any pending federal charges. Trump could also simply pardon himself, although his power to do so is debated.

Whatever the decision, the case could set new boundaries between the three branches of government by clarifying when former presidents can be tried in the courts under laws that Congress approved.

Here are the top takeaways from the high court’s decision to hear the case:

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

How is Trump claiming immunity from prosecution?

Trump faces four criminal cases for charges of election interference in federal court and in Georgia state court, for federal charges of mishandling classified documents and for New York charges of falsifying business records to pay hush money.

In the federal cases, Trump has argued he is completely immune from prosecution because crimes were charged for actions he took as president.

His lawyer, John Sauer, argued at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that former presidents are only vulnerable to criminal charges after the House has impeached and the Senate convicted a president. Sauer said in response to a judge’s questions that a president could kill a political opponent and get away with it if the Senate didn’t convict him.

But the three-judge appeals panel ruled unanimously that former presidents are subject to laws that Congress approves and that courts judge.

"Former President Trump lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct," the panel ruled.

Why did Trump welcome the Supreme Court taking case?

Trump welcomed the decision by arguing that without immunity, a president wouldn’t be able to function in the job because he would always be fearful about prosecution over contentious actions.

“Presidents will always be concerned, and even paralyzed, by the prospect of wrongful prosecution and retaliation after they leave office,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social . “This could actually lead to the extortion and blackmail of a President. The other side would say, ‘If you don’t do something, just the way we want it, we are going to go after you when you leave office, or perhaps even sooner.’”

But legal experts contend such an expansive view of immunity would leave presidents unaccountable. Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney, said “this isn’t a hard case” because providing a president immunity for trying to steal an election “has to be a loser.”

“If not, our claim to be a democracy is no longer viable,” Vance said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

McQuade, another former prosecutor, said a Supreme Court decision in spring would still allow Chutkan to begin a trial in August or September and finish it before November.

"I think there is time for the case to be decided and then tried before the election," McQuade said.

Why is the Supreme Court hearing Trump's appeal now?

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith had tried to get the high court to weigh in earlier but was rebuffed.

After the trial court judge ruled in December that the presidency doesn’t confer a lifelong “get-out-of-jail-free” pass, Smith tried to leapfrog the normal appeals process in hopes of getting a final decision so the trial could start in March.

Smith told the justices that the case presents "a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy” that only the Supreme Court can definitively resolve.

The Supreme Court declined Smith’s request without comment. There were no noted dissents.

No justices dissented Wednesday either when the court announced it will decide the immunity issue now that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has acted.

That leaves observers guessing about why they're taking the case. It takes four justices to agree to hear an appeal. A major reason for doing so is if they think the lower court’s decision was wrong. But another is if the issue is of major significance.

"While at least four justices agreed to hear the case, that doesn’t mean four are inclined to accept Trump’s immunity defense," said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former U.S. attorney. "Even Jack Smith argued that this issue is a matter of national import that should be decided by this court, even if only to reject the defense or limit its contours."

The decision to hear the appeal – but do so on an accelerated schedule − may also have been a compromise if some justices wanted to deny it outright and others wanted full consideration. The fact that the court took about two weeks to decide could indicate there was a lot of back-and-forth.

Alan Morrison, a law professor and associate dean for public interest at George Washington University, said options for the high court’s change of mind include wanting to hear what the circuit court had to say and perhaps playing a “bait and switch” on Smith.

“The fact is this is the worst outcome for him in terms of what could have happened,” Morrison said. “He’s certainly not at fault. I thought it was a bold move to try to get the court to take it.”

How quickly is the Supreme Court acting?

Typically, when a case gets appealed to the Supreme Court it can take months and months for a resolution. For example, in a case the justices heard Wednesday on whether the government can ban “bump stocks” on guns, the oral arguments came nearly four months after the court agreed to take the case.

In Trump’s immunity appeal, oral arguments will happen in about half that time.

“This is still a very expedited timetable for a major historic case at the Supreme Court,” Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House of Representatives' first impeachment of Trump, said on CNN.

Still, Smith this month had urged the court to act even sooner if they now wanted to hear the appeal. He was hoping for oral arguments in March, not April.

And it can take months for the justices to issue an opinion after hearing a case.

Delays could mean Supreme Court tells voters it's 'up to you,' expert says

The trial will be delayed, but it’s not clear for how long.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled the trial for March 4. But the dispute over immunity has halted action in the case indefinitely .

The justices agreed to hear the case the week of April 22, which means a decision could come in May or June. If the trial can proceed after the high court’s decision, there would still be about two months of preparation for trial, under Chutkan’s earlier schedule for the case.

Prosecutors have estimated their case could take four to six weeks, then Trump’s defense could present its arguments. The election interference trial could still happen before the November election, but the longer the Supreme Court takes to rule on immunity, the smaller the chances for a verdict before voting.

“The Supreme Court’s message to us is, ‘Hey voters, we’re leaving this up to you,’” Vance added on X .

Trump has other trials pending

Trump has a variety of civil and criminal trials pending as he hashes out the immunity claims with the Supreme Court. He is appealing civil verdicts totaling more than $500 million from columnist E. Jean Carroll and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Among criminal cases, Trump’s New York trial on charges of falsifying business records is scheduled March 25 and could last a couple of months.

Trump’s federal trial on charges of hoarding national defense records after leaving the White House is tentatively set for May 20. But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon set a scheduling hearing Friday to discuss pretrial preparations and the date could change.

Trump has asked Cannon to dismiss those charges based on immunity and her decision is pending. Trump contends that he designated records marked classified as personal records under the Presidential Records Act, so he was free to take them with him to Mar-a-Lago.

Prosecutors have disputed the records containing some of the country’s most important national security secrets were personal and said there was no documentation that they had been declassified.

In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges without a trial date set. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked for an Aug. 5 trial, but the judge hasn’t set a date yet. Trump is trying to disqualify Willis, with closing arguments in that dispute scheduled Friday.

How has Trump fared before the Supreme Court?

Trump reshaped the Supreme Court, giving it a potent conservative supermajority that has made major policy decisions, most notably overturning the 5-decade-old decision that made abortion legal nationwide.

But when it comes to Trump’s personal issues, he hasn’t gotten a lot of love.

After Trump lost reelection in 2020, the court  threw out a Texas lawsuit  aiming to overturn the results in four battleground states.

The court has also allowed New York City prosecutors and Congress to get his tax records and  didn’t stop  the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6 from accessing presidential documents. The justices also  declined Trump’s request  to get involved in the dispute over classified documents seized at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022.

But when hearing Trump’s challenge to Colorado’s decision that an anti-insurrection provision of the Constitution makes the former president ineligible to serve again, even the court’s liberal justices sounded skeptical that one state could make such a determination about a national candidate. That decision is pending.  

Another Trump case at the Supreme Court Supreme Court grapples with leaving Donald Trump on presidential ballot in Colorado

What are 'official acts' of a president?

In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court appeared to focus on what sort of “official acts” should shield a president from prosecution.

Part of Trump’s argument for immunity is based on one of the high court's earliest decisions, called Marbury v. Madison, which found a president’s official acts “can never be examinable by the courts.” Trump defined official acts broadly to include his campaign-related activities covered in the criminal charges.

But the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that former presidents can be tried for official acts because the prosecution by definition means the allegations were carried out in defiance of the law. In Marbury, the Supreme Court found the president is responsible for his conduct and “cannot at his discretion” violate the law.

“Here, former President Trump’s actions allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws, meaning those acts were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion; accordingly, Marbury and its progeny provide him no structural immunity from the charges in the Indictment,” the appeals panel wrote.

Morrison, the George Washington professor, said he expects the justices to focus on what actions could be considered official. For example, disputes over whether Trump should have called the National Guard to combat the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be considered official acts as commander in chief. But Trump’s reported effort to visit the Capitol during the riot might sound campaign related.

“I think what this question is looking at is the equivalent of what happens in civil liability cases involving the president, which is to zero in on specific acts that the indictment alleges and see whether they are within the outer limits of the president’s authority,” Morrison said. “It’s going to be very tricky.”

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was designated driver

Responding to Two Years of Russia’s Full-Scale War On Ukraine and Navalny’s Death

Office of the Spokesperson

February 23, 2024

Following Russia’s two years of unprovoked full-scale war, the death of opposition politician and anticorruption activist Aleksey Navalny, and a decade of aggression against Ukraine, the United States is sanctioning more than 500 individuals and entities in Russia and globally. There is a clear link between Russia’s authoritarianism, its domestic crackdown on dissent, and its aggression abroad. Today, we are imposing additional costs on Russia for both its internal repression and foreign aggression.

The Department of State is sanctioning three individuals in connection with the death of Navalny in Russian Penal Colony IK-3: the prison warden, regional prison head, and deputy director of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. In addition, the Department is imposing sanctions on more than 250 entities and individuals, including those engaged in sanctions evasion and circumvention, and those bolstering Russia’s future energy and metals and mining production.

Along with these actions, the Department is sanctioning several individuals to promote accountability for acts supporting Russia’s war, including by those involved in the unlawful transfer and/or deportation of Ukrainian children. Today’s financial sanctions targets are being designated pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 14024, as amended, which authorizes sanctions with respect to specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation.

The Department is also taking steps to impose visa restrictions on Russian Federation-installed purported authorities involved in human rights abuses in connection with the transfer, deportation and confinement of Ukrainian children.

Additionally, the U.S. government is issuing a business advisory to assist companies in making informed decisions regarding the risks of conducting business in Russia.

PROMOTING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR INDIVIDUALS INVOLVED IN THE DEATH OF ALEKSEY NAVALNY

The Department is designating the following three individuals connected to the death of Aleksey Navalny pursuant to section 1(a)(iii)(A) for being or having been a leader, official, senior executive officer, or member of the board of directors of the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • VALERIY GENNADEVICH BOYARINEV (BOYARINEV) is the Deputy Director of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, which includes oversight of Penal Colony IK-3. BOYARINEV reportedly instructed prison staff to exert harsher treatment on Aleksey Navalny while he was in detention. Following Navalny’s death, BOYARINEV was promoted to “Colonel General” by decree of Vladimir Putin.
  • IGOR BORISOVICH RAKITIN (RAKITIN) and VADIM KONSTANTINOVICH KALININ (KALININ) are officials in the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. RAKITIN is the overall head of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, in which Penal Colony IK-3 is located. KALININ is the warden of Penal Colony IK-3.

CONSTRAINING RUSSIA’S FUTURE ENERGY PRODUCTION AND EXPORTS

Further Sanctions on Entities Involved in the Arctic LNG 2 Project

The Department continues to designate entities involved in the development of Russia’s future energy production and export capacity. Today, the Department is designating two major entities involved in the financing and construction of highly specialized liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers designed specifically for Limited Liability Company Arctic LNG 2 (LLC Arctic LNG 2), the operator of the Arctic LNG 2 project, as well as several other entities involved in Arctic LNG 2 and other future energy projects in Russia. Construction and development of the Arctic LNG 2 Project has relied on foreign service companies’ expertise and technology to significantly expand Russia’s future LNG export capacity.

These actions follow the Department of State’s designation of LLC Arctic LNG 2 in November 2023, as well as multiple other entities involved in the development of the Arctic LNG 2 project. These designations have already produced delays in the project exports and resulted in significant increases in the project’s construction costs. Today’s actions demonstrate the United States’ continued commitment and resolve to constrain the Arctic LNG 2 project’s production and export capacity.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i) the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the manufacturing sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SHIPBUILDING COMPLEX ZVEZDA is a Russia-based shipbuilding company that is involved in the construction of up to 15 highly specialized LNG tankers intended for use in support of Arctic LNG 2 exports.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the marine sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MODERN MARINE ARCTIC TRANSPORT SPG (SMART LNG) is a Russia-based joint venture to lease new ice-class LNG carriers in support of Arctic LNG 2 exports.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the construction sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NOVATEK MURMANSK (NOVATEK MURMANSK) is a Russia-based civil engineering construction company. NOVATEK MURMANSK, also known as the Belokamenka shipyard, is involved in the assembly of the gravity-based structures and LNG production lines for the Arctic LNG 2 project.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entities are being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • AZORIA SHIPPING COMPANY LIMITED (AZORIA SHIPPING COMPANY) is a Cyprus-based shipping company intended to acquire a vessel supporting exports from the Arctic LNG 2 project. AZORIA SHIPPING COMPANY‘s global ultimate parent is Joint Stock Company Sovcomflot, a Russian state-owned enterprise.
  • ELIXON SHIPPING COMPANY LIMITED (ELIXON SHIPPING COMPANY) is a Cyprus-based shipping company intended to acquire a vessel supporting exports from the Arctic LNG 2 project. ELIXON SHIPPING COMPANY‘s global ultimate parent is Joint Stock Company Sovcomflot, a Russian state-owned enterprise.
  • GLORINA SHIPPING COMPANY LIMITED (GLORINA SHIPPING COMPANY) is a Cyprus-based shipping company intended to acquire a vessel supporting exports from the Arctic LNG 2 project. GLORINA SHIPPING COMPANY‘s global ultimate parent is Joint Stock Company Sovcomflot, a Russian state-owned enterprise.

Targeting Other Russian Future Energy Projects

The Department is also taking action against entities involved in other Russian future energy projects.

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GLOBALTEK was established in 2019 to implement and develop the future Yakutia Gas Project.

The Department is designating an additional two entities involved in the development and operation of Russia’s Ust-Luga LNG terminal. These actions follow previous sanctions against entities involved in the development of the Ust-Luga LNG terminal.

  • OOO RUSKHIMALYANS (RUSKHIMALYANS) is a Russia-based joint-venture company building an LNG complex at the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga. RUSKHIMALYANS is also the LNG project’s operator.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the transportation sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NEW COMMUNAL TECHNOLOGIES (NKT) is a subsidiary of RUSKHIMALYANS and is involved in transportation services and cargo handling on behalf of RUSKHIMALYANS.

Targeting a Major Russian State-Owned Enterprise Supporting Future Energy Projects

The Department is targeting a significant geological exploration company wholly owned by the Government of the Russian Federation. JSC ROSGEOLOGIA (ROSGEO) is a Russian state-owned multidisciplinary geological holding company, which provides geological exploration services. Within Russia, ROSGEO and its subsidiaries perform a range of geophysical services in the search and exploration of oil and gas fields. ROSGEO is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(vii) for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation.

ROSGEO performs similar operations for hydrocarbon and solid mineral exploration in over a dozen countries, primarily through two subsidiaries, YUZHMORGEOLOGIYA AO and ZARUBEZHGEOLOGIYA AO (ZARUBEZHGEOLOGIYA) . YUZHMORGEOLOGIYA AO and ZARUBEZHGEOLOGIA are being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the engineering sector of the Russian Federation economy.

  • The following vessels are being identified as property in which YUZHMORGEOLOGIYA AO has an interest: YUZHMORGEOLOGIYA and GELENDZHIK are research vessels operated by YUZHMORGEOLOGIYA AO for the purpose of geophysical exploration and are ultimately managed by ROSEGO.

The following entities affiliated with ROSGEO are engaged in activities such as surveying, industrial engineering, and providing engineering-related services in Russia. All eight entities are being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the engineering sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • NPTS NEDRA AO
  • IRKUTSKGEOFIZIKA AO
  • SEVERO VOSTOCHNOE PGO AO
  • SEVERO KAVKAZSKOE PGO AO
  • SIBIRSKOE PGO AO
  • CHELYABINSKGEOSEMKA AO
  • DALNEVOSTOCHNOE PGO AO
  • DALMORNEFTEGEOFIZIKA AO

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the architecture sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • TSENTRALNOE PGO PAO (TSENTRALNOE PGO) is owned by ROSGEO. TSENTRALNOE PGO provides architectural, engineering, and related services for geological exploration projects in Russia.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following two entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the manufacturing sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • TULSKOE NIGP AO and VNIGRI GEOLOGORAZVEDKA AO are both ultimately owned or managed by ROSGEO. Both entities are engaged in the manufacture of geophysical and mining equipment

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following two entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • TSENTRKVARTS PAO is managed by ROSGEO and is involved in geophysical exploration work for projects in Russia.
  • SEVERO ZAPADNOE PGO AO is owned by ROSGEO. SEVERO ZAPADNOE PGO AO is engaged in mineral exploration and mining activities.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the engineering sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • SEVMORNEFTEGEOFIZIKA AO (SMNG) is managed by ROSGEO. SMNG is involved in geophysical exploration and marine exploratory drilling in Russia, as well as for international projects on behalf of the Russian government.

The following vessels are being identified as property in which SMNG has an interest. The following five vessels are survey and research vessels used for the purpose of geophysical exploration and are ultimately managed by ROSGEO:

  • AKADEMIK PRIMAKOV
  • PROFESSOR LOGACHEV
  • AKADEMIK LAZEREV
  • AKADEMIK NEMCHINOV
  • PROFESSOR RYABINKIN
  • The AKADEMIK ALEKSANDR KARPINSKIY is being identified as property in which PMGRE has an interest. AKADEMIK ALEKSANDR KARPINSKIYis a survey and research vessel operated by PMGRE for the purpose of geophysical exploration and is ultimately managed by ROSGEO.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following three entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the engineering sector of the Russian Federation economy. These three entities are engaged in scientific engineering research, and are all managed by ROSGEO:

  • VNIGRIUGOL AO
  • VNIIZARUBEZHGEOLOGIYA VZG AO
  • The BAVENIT is being identified as property in which AMIGE has an interest. BAVENITis a survey and research vessel operated by AMIGE for the purpose of geophysical exploration and is ultimately managed by ROSGEO.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • URANGEOLOGORAZVEDKA AO (URANGEO) is managed by ROSGEO. URANGEO provides drilling services and related support for geological exploration projects in Russia.

Continued Pressure on Rosatom Subsidiaries

This is the sixth Russia sanctions action that includes designations of State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom (Rosatom) subsidiaries. These targets include Rosatom entities supporting Russia’s development of the Arctic region, future business development, and an enterprise of Russia’s nuclear weapons complex.

The Department is designating the following entities pursuant to section 1(a)(vii) for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY RUSATOM ARCTIC (RUSATOM ARCTIC) is a subsidiary of Rosatom that was established in 2023 to aid in Russia’s development of the Arctic region.
  • INNOVATION HUB LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY (INNOHUB) is a subsidiary of Rosatom that serves as Rosatom’s business accelerator and includes an investment portfolio, a project office, and a research and development center.
  • FEDERAL STATE UNITARY ENTERPRISE ALEXANDROV RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (ALEXANDROV RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY) is a subsidiary of Rosatom described as being a key enterprise of the nuclear weapons complex and involved in designing, testing, and supporting nuclear power and naval propulsion reactors, including for Russian submarines.

DISRUPTING SANCTIONS EVASION AND BACKFILLING EFFORTS

The Department continues to disrupt the networks and channels through which Russia attempts to procure technology and equipment from third countries to support its war effort. Specifically, these designations target producers, exporters, and importers of items critical to Russia’s defense-industrial base, including common high-priority items identified by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, alongside the EU, UK, and Japan. Entities based in the PRC, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, continue to send these items and other important dual-use goods to Russia, including critical components that Russia relies on for its weapons systems. Many of these procured components also include U.S.-origin aviation parts from top U.S. manufacturers. Russia has continued to leverage sanctions evasion and circumvention networks to procure aviation and microelectronic components in an effort to sustain its military industrial base and aviation industry, to include expropriated U.S. and European aircraft.

Targeting a Pathway for Microelectronics Imports to Russia

The Department is designating the following entity pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY PARTNERSHIP DA GROUP 22 (DA GROUP 22) is a Kazakhstan-based company that is receiving common high-priority items from Germany-based company, ELIX ST LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, and is sending common high-priority items to Russia-based company LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY STEK. The end users of these common high-priority items include the Russian military and Russian space and defense manufacturers.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vi)(B), the following entity is being designated for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of DA GROUP 22, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • ELIX ST LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY (ELIX ST) is a Germany-based company that has supplied common high-priority items to Kazakhstan-based company, DA GROUP 22.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(iii)(C), the following individual is being designated for being or having been a leader, official, senior executive officer, or member of the board of directors of ELIX ST:

  • YELENA LVOVNA CHERNET is the Managing Director of ELIX ST.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY STEK (STEK) is a Russia-based company involved in the production of electrical wiring works. STEK is receiving common high-priority items from DA GROUP 22.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SET 1 (SET 1) is a Russia-based company involved in the production of radio and television-transmission apparatuses. SET 1 uses microelectronic imports from STEK to develop products for the Russian military.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity and individual are being designated for operating or having operated in the manufacturing sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ELIKS M (ELIKS M) is a Russia-based company involved primarily in the wholesale distribution of industrial machinery and equipment. ELIKS M clients include various Russian defense companies.
  • YEVGENIY OLEGOVICH CHERNET is the General Director and majority shareholder of ELIKS M.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY PARTNERSHIP ELEM GROUP (ELEM GROUP) is a Kazakhstan-based company that has supplied common high-priority items to Russia-based, U.S.-designated STRELOI EKOMMERTS.

Türkiye-based Entities Supplying Common High-Priority Items to Russia

The Department is designating the following entities pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • MBK LOJISTIK MEDIKAL PAZARLAMA SANAYI IC VE DIS TICARET LIMITED SIRKETI (MBK LOJISTIK) is a Türkiye-based company that has supplied common high-priority items to Russia-based company, LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY A AVERS.
  • OLIMPIK GAMA IC VE TICARET SANAYI LIMITED SIRKETI (OLIMPIK GAMA) is a Türkiye-based company that has supplied common high-priority items to Russia-based company, LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TRADE HOUSE KYUTEK.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TRADE HOUSE KYUTEK (TRADE HOUSE) is a Russia-based company that has received common high-priority electronic components supplied by Türkiye-based company, OLIMPIK GAMA.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY A AVERS (A AVERS) is a Russia-based company that has received common high-priority electronic components supplied by Türkiye-based company, MBK LOJISTIK.

Türkiye-based Entities Involved in Procuring G7-Origin Aircraft Components for Entities Based in Russia

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the aerospace sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • ALPHA VISIT SHOP FOREIGN TRADE LIMITED COMPANY (ALPHA VISIT) is a Türkiye-based company, founded by a Russian national in May 2022, that supplied aircraft parts to Russia-based companies, including an entity that is Entity Listed by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

A UAE-based Entity Supplying Common High-Priority Items to Russia

  • ASIA INTERNATIONAL TRADE PROVIDER LLC (ASIA INTERNATIONAL) is a UAE-based company that has supplied common high-priority items to Russia-based, U.S.-designated LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MDIKAM EK.

UAE-based Entities Involved in Procuring G7-Origin Aircraft Components for Entities Based in Russia

The Department is designating the following entity pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the transportation sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • POLARSTAR LOGISTICS LLC (POLARSTAR) is a UAE-based company that offers cargo shipping services from the UAE to Russia. POLARSTAR is listed as an S7 Airlines representative office and acts as a cargo agent in the UAE on behalf of S7 Airlines, which is Entity Listed by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the aerospace sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ANGAR (ANGAR) is solely owned by S7 ENGINEERING. ANGAR is primarily engaged in renting, buying, selling, managing, and appraising real estate.
  • MIRAGE AIR CRAFT SERVICES SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP LLC is a UAE-based company that supplied aircraft parts to the Russia-based company S7 ENGINEERING.
  • CRYNOFIST AVIATION FZCO is a UAE-based company that supplied Russian aviation companies with G7-origin aircraft parts.
  • RBG SOLUTION FZE is a UAE-based company that supplied G7-origin aircraft parts to the Russia-based company, S7 ENGINEERING.

PRC-based Entities Involved in Procuring Electronic Components for Entities with Ties to the Russian Military

  • ZHEJIANG OULONG ELECTRIC CO LTD (ZHEJIANG OULONG ELECTRIC) is a private manufacturer of printed circuit boards based in Wenzhou, PRC. From January to October 2023, Zhejiang Oulong Electric supplied Russian entities with more than $2 million worth of products found on the BIS List of Common High Priority Items. ZHEJIANG OULONG ELECTRIC has supplied common high-priority items to Russia-based, U.S.-designated INELSO OOO. INELSO OOO was sanctioned by the United States in May 2023 and has also been identified in the Official Journal of the European Union as an entity that has contributed to Russia’s military and technological enhancement or to the development of Russia’s defense and security sector.
  • WUHAN MAIWE COMMUNICATION CO LTD (WUHAN MAIWE) is a PRC-based company that supplies common high priority items to Russian companies. WUHAN MAIWE has supplied common high-priority items to Russia-based, U.S.-designated company REGION-PROF LLC. REGION-PROF LLC has procured multiple shipments of common high priority items on behalf of the Russian military and security services.
  • COREBAI MICROELECTRONICS BEIJING COMPANY LIMITED is a PRC-based micro-electronics producer that has Russian distributors, works with SDN listed INELSO OOO, and has a distribution warehouse in Russia.

CONSTRAINING RUSSIA’S METALS AND MINING REVENUE

The Department of State continues to designate individuals and entities involved in Russia’s metals and mining sector to further constrict Russia’s revenue generation from this key source of funds for the Russian federal budget.

Targeting Russia’s Largest Pipe Producer

The Department is designating PUBLIC JOINT STOCK COMPANY PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY (PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY) , Russia’s leading supplier of steel pipe, piping solutions, and related services. PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY also supplied piping for U.S.-designated Nord Stream 2 AG, the project implementation company for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i), for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy.

The following five entities, all of which are subsidiaries of PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY, are being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(vii) for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TUBES 2000
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK OIL FIELD SERVICES
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK PREMIUM SERVICES
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK TECHNICAL SERVICE
  • SPS ME FZCO

The following additional subsidiaries of PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY are all being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY CHELYABINSK PIPE ROLLING PLANT is the leading supplier of steel pipe, piping solutions, and related services for a variety of sectors of the Russian economy.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK YARTSEVSKIY METALLURGICAL PLANT is a modern casting and rolling factory for the production of long products with a capacity of more than 300 thousand tons per year.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY VOLZHSKIY PIPE PLANT is involved in the production of steel pipes, hollow profiles, and fittings.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY ORSKIY MACHINE BUILDING PLANT is involved in the production of steel pipes, hollow profiles, and fittings.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY PERVOURALSKIY NEW PIPE PLANT produces steel pipes and cylinders.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SINARSKIY PIPE PLANT (SINARSKIY PIPE PLANT) is a specialized enterprise for the production of steel pipes, providing industrial services.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY TAGANROG METALLURGICAL PLANT (TAGANROG METALLURGICAL PLANT) produces many types of steel pipes.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SEVERSKIY PIPE PLANT (SEVERSKIY PIPE PLANT) is one of the oldest metallurgical enterprises in Russia and produces various steel pipe products.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SMARTMET manufactures steel tubes, pipes, and related fittings.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK PIPELINE SOLUTIONS manufactures steel tubes, pipes, and related fittings.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK TAYMIR treats and coats metals.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • INTERNATIONAL COMPANY LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK STEEL HOLDING is a subsidiary of PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY and is primarily engaged in holding or owning securities of companies and is involved in financial asset investing.

The following two additional subsidiaries of PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY are being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the transportation sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SINARATRANSAUTO has worked in the automobiles logistics market since 2005 and provides comprehensive road transportation services for the SINARSKIY PIPE PLANT.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SINARAPROMTRANS (SINARAPROMTRANS) is the only operator of internal railway logistics for the TAGANROG METALLURGICAL PLANT, VOLZHSKIY PIPE PLANT, and SEVERSKIY PIPE PLANT pipe factories, included in the PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY network. Additionally, SINARAPROMTRANS has two divisions in Siberia, which carry out rail delivery of coal from mining sites.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the accounting sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TMK BUSINESS SERVICES CENTER is a subsidiary of PIPE METALLURGICAL COMPANY whose main business activities are accounting, bookkeeping, auditing activities, and tax consultancy.

Further Targeting Russian Gold Mining

The Department is designating KONSTANTIN IVANOVICH STRUKOV (STRUKOV) and PUBLIC JOINT STOCK COMPANY UZHURALZOLOTO GROUP OF COMPANIES (JSC UGC) , one of Russia’s top ten gold miners. STRUKOV is the founder and majority owner of JSC UGC and was sanctioned by the United Kingdom on November 8, 2023. STRUKOV and JSC UGC are both being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, STRUKOV, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY UGC is owned by STRUKOV.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SOVRUDNIK extracts metal ores and is owned by JSC UGC.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY KOMMUNAROVSKIY GOLD MINE is involved in the mining of ores and sands of precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum.

Targeting A Russian Aluminum Products Producer

The Department is designating JOINT STOCK COMPANY SAMARA METALLURGICAL PLANT (SAMARA METALLURGICAL PLANT) , a Russia-based firm that produces a broad assortment of aluminum products and is the largest producer of semi-fabricated aluminum products in Russia. SAMARA METALLURGICAL PLANT is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy. MIKHAIL GRIGORYEVICH SPICHAK (SPICHAK) is the General Director of the SAMARA METALLURICAL PLANT and MAXIM YURYEVICH SMIRNOV (SMIRNOV) is the President of the SAMARA METALLURGICAL PLANT. Both SPICHAK and SMIRNOV are being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy.

Targeting A Key Russian Metals & Mining Network

The Department is targeting a network of Russian mining companies connected to the wealthy Russian Trotsenko family believed to be close to President of Russia Vladimir Putin. The following entities are being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • ILLC GEOPROMINING INVESTMENT is involved in activities including security and commodity exchanges among other financial service activities.
  • LLC HOLDING GPM (HOLDING GPM) is involved in activities including investments in securities and financial asset investing.HOLDING GPM is the founder and majority owner of the following four entities which are being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(vii) for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, HOLDING GPM, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:
  • LLC GEOPROMAINING
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRYAZH INVEST
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GEOPROMAINING VERKHNE MENKECHE
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NATSIONALNAYA SURMYANAYA KOMPANIYA (NSK)

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, NSK, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GROSS was founded and is owned by NSK.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY VISMUT is primarily engaged in the mining and enrichment of iron ores.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY ZVEZDA is primarily engaged in mining, milling, or otherwise preparing ferroalloy ores.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SARYLAKH SURMA is primarily engaged in mining, milling, or otherwise preparing ferroalloy ores.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY AEON MINING is primarily engaged in the mining of ores and sands of precious metals.

CONSTRAINING RUSSIA’S WAR EFFORT

Entities and Individuals Manufacturing Weapons, Ammunitions, and Other Equipment

The Department is continuing to take significant action to disrupt and degrade Russia’s military industrial base and today is targeting nearly 60 entities and individuals involved in the manufacture of weapons, ammunition, and associated materiel. The defense industry entities and individuals included below manufacture weapons, ammunition, and related equipment for the Russian defense sector to support its illegal war against Ukraine.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY TULA MACHINE BUILDING PLANT (TULAMASHZAVOD) is one of the largest enterprises of the Russian military industrial base manufacturing numerous gun systems for Russian armored vehicles, aircraft, and anti-aircraft systems.
  • EVGENII ANATOLEVICH DRONOV is the Director General of TULAMASHZAVOD.
  • PUBLIC JOINT STOCK COMPANY IMPERIAL TULA ARMS PLANT (IMPERIAL TULA ARMS PLANT) manufactures high-precision antitank guided missiles and various small arms for the Russian military.
  • GUN-MAKING COMPANY LEVSHA-T LLC manufactures small arms and is wholly owned by IMPERIAL TULA ARMS PLANT.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SCIENTIFIC AND PRODUCTION ASSOCIATION PRIBOR NAMED AFTER S.S. GOLEMBIOVSKY (JSC NPO PRIBOR) is one of Russia’s largest manufacturers of small-caliber ammunition and weapons systems for use by the Russian military.
  • YURI ALEXANDROVICH NABOKOV is the General Director of JSC NPO PRIBOR.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY NOVOSIBIRSK MECHANICAL PLANT ISKRA (NMZ ISKRA) manufactures ammunition, explosives and other specialized components for the Russian defense industry.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY VERKHNYAYA SALDA CHEMICAL CONTAINER PLANT (AO VZKHE) manufactures missile technology for the Russian defense industry.
  • JSC IZHEVSK MOTOR PLANT AKSION HOLDING (AKSION HOLDING) manufactures equipment for control systems for the Topol-M and Yars missile systems, as well as communication and information processing systems.
  • GENNADY IVANOVICH KUDRYAVTSEV is the Director General of AKSION HOLDING.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY VOSKRESENSKY AGGREGATION FACTORY (JSC VAF) assembles antiaircraft guided missiles, air-to-air and air-to-surface guided missiles, and cruise missiles for use by the Russian military.
  • ALEKSANDR VIACHESLAVOVICH SYCHUGOV is the General Director of JSC VAF.
  • FEDERAL STATE ENTERPRISE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION KAZAN PLANT OF PRECISION ENGINEERING (NPO KZTM) manufactures explosives for the Russian defense industry.
  • JSC SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION ASSOCIATION EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN BUREAU NAMED AFTER M SIMONOV (OKB SIMONOV) develops and produces unmanned aerial systems and aerial training targets.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TRIMIX (3MX) manufactures electronic warfare systems and anti-UAV systems used by the Russian military.
  • CENTRAL RESEARCH RADIO ENGINEERING INSTITUTE NAMED AFTER ACADEMICIAN A I BERG (TSNIRTI BERG) builds satellite and radar equipment for contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE EKRAN (EKRAN) works on the development, production, testing, and repair of aviation equipment used by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY ARZAMAS MACHINE BUILDING PLANT (ARZAMAS) manufactures armored vehicles used by the Russian military in Ukraine.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPANY (MIC) develops and manufactures armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored cars for the Russian military.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SPECIAL DESIGN BUREAU OF TRANSPORT MECHANICAL ENGINEERING (SPETSMASH) develops and manufactures armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and other specialized equipment for the Russian military.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY ASTEIS manufactures armored vehicles for the Russian defense industry.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY SPECIAL DESIGN BUREAU OF INSTRUMENT MAKING AND AUTOMATION (SKB PA) develops and manufactures electro-hydraulic, electromechanical, navigation, and control systems for mobile robotic complexes for the Russian defense industry.
  • FEDERAL STATE UNITARY ENTERPRISE STATE RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION ENTERPRISE BAZALT (NPO BAZALT) is involved in the design and construction of air launched ordnance, rocket propelled grenades, and armored fighting vehicle ammunition. NPO BAZALT was designated pursuant to E.O. 13662 on July 16, 2014.
  • OTKRYTOE AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO NOVO-VYATKA (NOVO-VYATKA) manufactures various technical equipment with defense applications. NOVO-VYATKA was designated pursuant to E.O. 13662 on December 22, 2015.
  • NIKOLAY VLADIMIROVICH PORKHACHEV (PORKHACHEV) is the General Director of NPO BAZALT, and was the temporary General Director of OTKRYTOE AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO NOVO-VYATKA.
  • FARID KHABIBULLOVICH ABDRAKHMANOV is the General Director of JOINT STOCK COMPANY EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN BUREAU NOVATOR, which develops and produces cruise missiles, including the Kalibr cruise missile, and was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 in September 2023.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TRADING HOUSE LOBAEV ARMS (LOBAEV ARMS) is a company registered in Russia that manufactures weapons and ammunition.
  • VLADISLAV YEVGENYEVICH LOBAEV (VLADISLAV LOBAEV) is the founder of LOBAEV ARMS.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY LOBAEV ROBOTICS (LOBAEV ROBOTICS) is a company registered in Russia that manufactures weapons and ammunition.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CONSTRUCTION BUREAU OF INTEGRATED SYSTEMS (LLC KBIS) is a company registered in Russia that produces weapons and ammunition.
  • ELENA ANATOLYEVNA LOBAEVA (ELENA LOBAEVA) is a founder and owner of LLC KBIS.
  • FUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF WEAPONS TECHNOLOGIES AND PRODUCTION LOBAEV FOUNDATION (LOBAEV FOUNDATION) is registered in Russia and its programs include the development of precision small arms technologies, development of the production of precision weapons, development and modernization of specialized UAVs, and development and supply of special equipment.
  • NIKOLAY YEVGENYEVICH LOBAEV (NIKOLAY LOBAEV) is a shareholder, director, and legal representative of LOBAEV ARMS.

Entities Supporting Russia’s Military Industrial Base

The Department continues to designate entities involved in the development of advanced technologies and high-tech machine tools being used to substitute production of goods Russia can no longer import, as well as entities involved in the manufacture of weapons and ammunition supporting Russia’s defense industry. The Department is designating the following entities involved in the development of additive manufacturing (3D printing) and computer numerical control (CNC) technologies, among other individuals and entities within the Russian military industrial base.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY ELEKTRONNAYA MOSKVA is contracted to cover technical support and maintenance of Moscow’s facial recognition system.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY 2050 ADDITIVE TECHNOLOGIES is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ADDITIVE TECHNOLOGY is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY OFFICE TECHNOLOGY JETCOM is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NPC ANTEY is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MAKETIR is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ENGINEERING CENTER OF ADDITIVE TECHNOLOGIES is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NOVAPRINT 3D is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ONSINT is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TPK FOLIPLAST is a Russia-based additive manufacturing company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SPRUT TECHNOLOGY is a Russia-based company that develops software for computer numerical control machines.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CENTER SPRUT T is a Russia-based company that develops software for computer numerical control machines.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY DIAPAZON is a supplier of electronic components throughout Russia.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the manufacturing sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY KLINTSOVSKIY MOBILE CRANE PLANT is one of the largest and most reputable manufacturers of lifting equipment in Russia. The plant produces modern automobile and crawler cranes.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GALIKA MET repairs metalworking machines and is involved in the sale of machinery and equipment.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GALIKA SKD is involved in the sale of woodworking machines.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GALIKA TSENTR TEKHNOLOGI I SERVIS is an industrial machinery and equipment wholesaler headquartered in Russia.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GALIKA SERVIS repairs machinery and equipment.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY PROIZVODSTVENNYE RESHENIYA is involved in the machining of metal products, manufacture of metalworking machines, and manufactures of other machine tools.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY PROIZVODSTVENNOE OBEDINENIE FORT (JSC PO FORT) operates in the machinery wholesale industry.
  • DIANA EVGENEVNA KALEDINA is the Director General of JSC PO FORT.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MACHINE BUILDING FACTORY FORT is involved in the machining of metal products, manufacture of metalworking machines, and manufactures of other machine tools.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SASOVSKI LITEINY ZAVOD operates in the casting of iron industry.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY ABAMET is a Russia-based industrial machinery and equipment wholesale company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY HERMLE VOSTOK is a Russia-based industrial machinery and equipment wholesale company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ATM GRUPP is a Russia-based machinery wholesale company that supplies CNC machines.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY INZHENERNO TEKHNOLOGICHESKI TSENTR ATM is a Russia-based machinery wholesale company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ATM TEKHNOLODZHI is a Russia-based machinery wholesale company that supplies high-quality metalworking equipment.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KNAUER ENGINEERING is a Russia-based company that operates in the Industrial Machinery Repair and Maintenance industry.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY AMS TEKHNIKA is a Russia-based company involved in the wholesale distribution of industrial machinery and equipment.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY JOINT TECHNOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE PERM PLANT OF METAL WORKING CENTERS (PZMC) manufactures CNC metalworking machines, lathes, turn-milling, and milling machines including the PROTON T series machines.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY MEKHANIKA produces advanced industrial equipment for high-performance turning and milling of steels and alloys.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY KOVROV ELECTROMECHANICAL PLANT (KEMZ) designs and manufactures a variety of multifunctional turning, milling, and turn-mill machining CNC machines and associated equipment.
  • AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO TOZ-METIZ manufactures high-precision fasteners and other hardware for the Russian defense industry and is wholly owned by IMPERIAL TULA ARMS PLANT.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NATIONAL CENTRE FOR INFORMATION SECURITY is a Russia-based company that develops counter-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems and develops information security systems that are used by multiple Russian government agencies.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NEIT is a Russia-based company and is involved in the wholesale trade of electronic equipment and its spare parts.

Countering Russia-Iran Military Cooperation and Arms Proliferation

The Department remains focused on highlighting and disrupting the ongoing military cooperation between Iran and Russia to further Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine. In December 2022 and October 2023, we designated numerous Russian and Iranian entities for their involvement in the proliferation of arms including transfers of UAVs from Iran for Russia’s use against Ukraine, conventional arms and related materiel from Iran to Russia, and major weapons systems from Russia to Iran, including the Yak-130 combat aircraft.

Today, we continue these efforts by designating the Iranian MINISTRY OF DEFENSE AND ARMED FORCES LOGISTICS (MODAFL) for the first time under a Russia-related sanctions authority, as well as two shipping companies that have previously been involved in arms related transfers between Iran and Russia. At least as of 2022, ROSOBORONEKSPORT OAO had worked through MODAFL to facilitate Iranian munitions transfers to Russia. Additionally, MODAFL worked with other Iranian military entities to facilitate the transfer of armed UAVs to Russia beginning in 2022. This action aligns with the Department of the Treasury’s designations today of a network of entities and individuals that has supported efforts by the Government of the Russian Federation and MODAFL to establish a facility in Russia to supply the Russian military with one-way attack UAVs, such as the Shahed-136 UAVs, and the Russian version, the Geran-2, for use in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vi)(B), the following entity is being designated for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of ROSOBORONEKSPORT OAO, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • MINISTRY OF DEFENSE AND ARMED FORCES LOGISTICS (MODAFL) is the Iranian Ministry of Defense and has been involved in transfers of major weapons systems between Russia and Iran. MODAFL was previously designated pursuant to E.O. 13382, E.O. 13224, and E.O. 13949.
  • Pursuant to the Order, the following vessels are being identified as property in which DALIR LTD has an interest: ALIREZA 1 and BALTIYSKIY-111 . ALIREZA 1 and BALTIYSKIY-111 are general cargo ships.
  • Pursuant to the Order, SKIF-V is being identified as property in which LADOGA LTD has an interest. SKIF-V is a general cargo ship.

Disrupting Russia-DPRK Munitions Transfers

The Department will continue to disrupt and expose arms transfers between the DPRK and Russia. As part of that ongoing effort, the Department is designating two additional entities that have been involved in the transfer of munitions from the DPRK to Russia. Since September 2023, the DPRK has delivered more than 10,000 containers of munitions or munitions-related materials to Russia.

Russia has imported shipping containers carrying military-related cargo from the DPRK through Vostochny Port for use in the Ukraine conflict since early October 2023. Specifically, more than 7,400 containers of munitions and munitions-related materials have been delivered to Russia through the VOSTOCHNAYA STEVEDORING COMPANY LLC (VSC)-owned terminal at Vostochny Port. Containers of munitions and munitions-related materials have also been delivered to Russia through the nearby DUNAY PROBABLE NAVAL MISSILE FACILITY.

These designations follow the Department’s designations of several other entities and individuals involved in munitions transfers from the DPRK to Russia in July, September, and December 2023 as well as designations of entities involved in the transfer of ballistic missiles from the DPRK to Russia in January 2024.

  • VOSTOCHNAYA STEVEDORING COMPANY LLC (VSC) manages a terminal at Vostochny Port in Russia’s far east through which more than 7,400 containers of munitions and munitions-related materials have been delivered from the DPRK.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • DUNAY PROBABLE NAVAL MISSILE FACILITY is a Russian naval base and port facility that has been involved in the transfer of munitions from the DPRK to Russia.

Targeting Third-Party Support to Russia’s Defense Sector

The Department continues to be vigilant against entities and individuals in third countries that provide support to Russia’s defense sector. Today’s actions demonstrate that we will not hesitate to take action under all relevant authorities against those engaging in transactions with or providing other forms of support to Russia’s defense sector.

  • JSC 558 AIRCRAFT REPAIR PLANT is a Belarusian defense company that maintains and repairs aircraft equipment and trains other personnel in the repair and operation of certain aviation materiel. JSC 558 AIRCRAFT REPAIR PLANT retains close ties to the Russian defense sector and was previously designated pursuant to E.O. 14038 on February 24, 2022.
  • PAVEL IVANOVICH PINIGIN is the former director of JSC 558 AIRCRAFT REPAIR PLANT.
  • PRO HELI INTERNATIONAL SERVICES LIMITED (PRO HELI) is a Uganda-based joint venture with the National Enterprises Corporation that provides maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for Uganda’s fleet of Russian-origin helicopters. Additionally, PRO HELI maintains a partnership with the JSC 558 AIRCRAFT REPAIR PLANT and has procured weapons from U.S.-designated Russian arms companies as recently as 2023.
  • VALERII COPEICHIN is the CEO of PRO HELI and has previously been named in a United Nations report for involvement in weapons shipments to South Sudan.

Continued Pressure on Private Military Companies

The Department is continuing our efforts to expose and disrupt the activities of Russian private military companies and individuals supporting Russia’s war aims against Ukraine. Despite the demise of the PMC Wagner’s Yevgeniy Prigozhin, today’s actions highlight our focus on countering the malign activities of such groups and individuals operating in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities and individual are being designated for operating or having operated in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANY CONVOY (PMC CONVOY) is a private military company operating in Ukraine.
  • KONSTANTIN ALEXANDROVICH PIKALOV is a leader of PMC CONVOY operating in Ukraine.
  • AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO KONSALT is the new legal form of the PMC Wagner Center in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
  • ALEXEY VASILYEVICH TENSIN is the former leader of PMC Wagner Center and a former manager at JSC Concern Kalashnikov.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(ii)(F), the following individuals are being designated for being responsible for or complicit in, or having directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, activities that undermine the peace, security, political stability, or territorial integrity of the United States, its allies, or its partners, for or on behalf of, or for the benefit of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • ANDREI NIKOLAEVICH TROSHEV is a former senior leader of PMC Wagner and reportedly now holds a position in the Russian Ministry of Defense.
  • ANTON OLEGOVICH ELIZAREV is a former commander in PMC Wagner.
  • STANISLAV ALEXANDROVICH ORLOV is a commander of a private military company that has operated in Ukraine.
  • MIKHAIL VICTOROVICH TURKANOV is a member of a private military company that has operated in Ukraine.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, JOINT STOCK COMPANY BARNAUL CARTRIDGE PLANT, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • SHOOTING CENTER ALTAY SHOOTING LTD (SHOOTING CENTER ALTAY) is a shooting range owned by JOINT STOCK COMPANY BARNAUL CARTRIDGE PLANT. Additionally, Shooting Center Altay reportedly has been used by PMC Wagner-affiliated individuals to conduct trainings.

Continued Targeting of Russian State-Owned Enterprises

The Department is further targeting Russian state-owned enterprises in the automotive sector, which continues to be a key aspect of the Russian military industrial base, as well as the state-owned enterprise involved in the development of the Russian Far East and Russian Arctic regions.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designed for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY FAR EAST AND ARCTIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (JSC KRDV) is the management company responsible for coordinating investment projects in the Free Port of Vladivostok, the Special Administrative Region on Russky Island, and the advanced special economic zones in the Far Eastern and Arctic regions of Russia.The following ten entities are majority owned by JSC KRDV and coordinate future energy and mining projects, among others, in their respective titular region. Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), all ten entities are being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, JSC KRDV:
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV PRIMORYE
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV AMURSKAYA
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV BURYATIYA
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV CHUKOTKA
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV KAMCHATKA
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV MURMANSK
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV SAKHALIN AND KURILY
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV YAKUTIYA
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV YUZHNAYA YAKUTIYA
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KRDV ZABAYKALYE

Pursuant to section 1(a)(iv), the following entity is being designated for being a political subdivision, agency, or instrumentality of the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • FEDERAL STATE UNITARY ENTERPRISE CENTRAL ORDER OF THE RED BANNER SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AUTOMOBILE AND AUTOMOTIVE ENGINES INSTITUTE NAMI (NAMI) is the parent company of several entities conducting engineering research, manufacturing, and sales of automotives in Russia. NAMI is included in a list of strategic enterprises essential for the national defense and security of Russia and is subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, NAMI, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY AUTO HOLDING (AUTO HOLDING) is a Russia-based holding company owned by NAMI.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following NAMI-affiliated entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the transportation sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SHUSHARY AVTO produces motor vehicles.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY AURUS produces motor vehicles.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY FIBET NAMI ADVANCED ENGINEERING is an automobile and auto parts company located in Russia and conducts sales of spare parts and accessories for cars and industrial vehicles.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NAMI INNOVATIVE COMPONENTS produces components and accessories for motor vehicles.

PROMOTING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR MALIGN ACTORS

The Department is also taking further action today to target a range of individuals and entities involved in supporting the Russian government’s war effort and other malign activities.

Targeting a Russian Proxy Authority in Occupied Territories of Ukraine

VITALIY VIKTOROVICH BULYUK (BULYUK) is a so-called deputy head of the Russian-backed military-civilian administration of the Kherson Region. BULYUK is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(ii)(F) for being responsible for or complicit in, or having directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, activities that undermine the peace, security, political stability, or territorial integrity of the United States, its allies, or its partners, for or on behalf of, or for the benefit of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation.

Targeting Individuals Supporting Russia’s Expropriation of Foreign Companies

The Department continues to impose sanctions to highlight the Government of the Russian Federation’s seizure of Russian subsidiaries of foreign companies.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following individuals are being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • VASILI VLADISLAVOVICH NIKONOV was appointed interim CEO of PJSC Unipro, the Russian subsidiary of Germany’s Uniper that has been placed under “temporary control” by the Government of the Russian Federation.
  • VYACHESLAV EVGENEVICH KOZHEVNIKOV was appointed the interim CEO of PAO Forward Energo, the Russian subsidiary of Finland’s Fortum that has been placed under “temporary control” by the Government of the Russian Federation.

Targeting Russia’s Malign Influence in Moldova

The Department is imposing sanctions on MARINA TAUBER (TAUBER) , chief representative in Moldova of ILAN MIRONOVICH SHOR (SHOR), a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order. During last year’s local elections, TAUBER helped the fugitive, U.S.-sanctioned SHOR shift his party apparatus from the U.S.-sanctioned SHOR PARTY to other parties and subvert Moldova’s electoral process through illegal vote buying on behalf of the Kremlin. SHOR has demonstrated his intent to use his malign criminal network, and TAUBER as his chief representative, to wage similar subversion campaigns in upcoming election cycles. Moldovans deserve free and fair democratic processes. The United States supports Moldova’s progress on democratic and economic reforms and a future free from the grip of the Kremlin’s malign influence. We will continue to promote accountability for those who try to subvert the will of the Moldovan electorate.

TAUBER is described as SHOR’s second-in-command and has directed the operations of SHOR’s malign networks in Moldova, as well as operations of the SHOR PARTY, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order. TAUBER is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, SHOR, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order.

The Network of Sergey Gordeev

SERGEY EDUARDOVICH GORDEEV (GORDEEV) is a Russian businessman whose ventures have benefitted from connections to SULIEMAN ABUSAIDOVICH KERIMOV and SERGEY SEMYONOVICH SOBYANIN, persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order. GORDEEV is the founder, general manager, and owner of LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY HOLDING FINANCE. GORDEEV is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy. Additionally, two of GORDEEV’s affiliated companies have allegedly been recruiting contract soldiers for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY HOLDING FINANCE (HOLDING FINANCE) is involved in investments in securities and dealer activities.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY PIK PLUS (PIK PLUS) is involved in investments in securities and dealer activities.
  • INTERNATIONAL COMPANY LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY LEDAMEN (LEDAMEN) is located in Kaliningrad, Russia and is involved in investments in securities. Additionally, GORDEEV is the General Director of LEDAMEN.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the construction sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY INZHTEPLOPROGRESS (INZHTEP) is a construction company located in Russia. INZHTEP is allegedly involved in the recruitment of contract soldiers for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
  • PUBLIC JOINT STOCK COMPANY PIK SPECIALIZED HOMEBUILDER (PIK) is a construction company located in Russia. Additionally, GORDEEV was the head of PIK until September 28, 2022.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, PIK, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY PIK KORPORATSIYA (PIK KORPORATSIYA) is a wholly owned subsidiary of PIK and is involved in construction activities.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, PIK KORPORATSIYA, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY PIK GENPODRYAD (GENPODRYAD) is majority owned by PIK KORPORATSIYA.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, GENPODRYAD, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GENERAL CONTRACTOR MFS (GP-MFS) is owned by GENPODRYAD. GP-MFS is allegedly involved in the recruitment of contract soldiers for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Network of Andrey Komarov

ANDREY ILYICH KOMAROV (KOMAROV) is a Russian businessman active in various sectors of the Russian Federation economy. Ministry of Trade and Industry officials within the Government of the Russian Federation have planned to use ANDREY KOMAROV as a front man to acquire companies for Rostec. KOMAROV is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the construction sector of the Russian Federation economy. KOMAROV is also the founder and owner of LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY SEPTEMBER (SEPTEMBER) , which is active in the construction sector. SEPTEMBER is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the construction sector of the Russian Federation economy.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, KOMAROV, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY OKTYABR (OKTYABR) is solely owned by KOMAROV and is a facilities management company for KOMAROV’s companies.

The Department is taking action to target a wide range of additional entities connected to KOMAROV’s corporate network.

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CYBERSTEEL (CYBERSTEEL) is one of Russia’s leading suppliers of stainless-steel tubular products.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CYBERSTEEL ALABUGA (CYBERSTEEL ALABUGA) is involved in the manufacturing of steel pipes, hollow profiles and fittings.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CYBERSTEEL PROJECT 2 (CYBERSTEEL PROJECT 2) is involved in the manufacturing of steel pipes, hollow profiles and fittings.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY HS INVESTMENTS (HS INVESTMENTS) is a Russia-based holding company.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entity is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY HS INVESTMENTS, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY PRESSMAN SOFT PACKAGING NOVGOROD is involved in the manufacturing of other paper and cardboard products in Velikiy Novgorod, Russia.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY PRESSMAN PREMIUM PACKAGING NOVGOROD (PRESSMAN PREMIUM PACKAGING NOVGOROD) is a Russia-based company that operates in the paper product manufacturing industry.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY PRESSMAN PREMIUM PACKAGING SPB (PRESSMAN PREMIUM PACKAGING SPB) manufactures paper and cardboard products in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY START (START) is a Russia-based holding company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY HYPERSPACE (HYPERSPACE) is a Russia-based holding company.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entities are being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, HYPERSPACE, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to E.O. 14024:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY VARNA MINERALS is a Russia-based company solely owned by HYPERSPACE involved in geological exploration and geochemical studies.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GEYSER GOLD is a Russia-based company solely owned by HYPERSPACE involved in geological exploration and geochemical studies.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY DATA 51 is a Russia-based company solely owned by HYPERSPACE involved in geological exploration and geochemical studies.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY INNOVATIVE EDUCATION is a Russia-based company solely owned by HYPERSPACE involved in real estate management.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TERRA GRUP is a Russia-based company solely owned by HYPERSPACE involved in land purchasing and sales.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY URAL EDUCATIONAL RESIDENCE is a Russia-based company solely owned by HYPERSPACE involved in real estate management.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY THREEAGRO (THREEAGRO) is a Russia-based holding company.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GORA GOLDEN RATIO (GORA) is a Russia-based holding company.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entities are being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY GORA GOLDEN RATIO, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY KAMCHATSKAYA GORNAYA KOMPANIYA is a Russia-based company that was founded by and is solely owned by GORA.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TIKHOOKEANSKAYA GORNAYA KOMPANIYA is a Russia-based company that was founded by and is solely owned by GORA.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY DIGITAL CENTER HYPERSPACE is a Russia-based company that operates in the accounting and tax preparation industry.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ZHELTUGINSKAYA MINING COMPANY (ZHELTUGINSKAYA) is a Russia-based company that is involved in the mining of ore and precious metal dusts.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following are being designated for operating or having operated in the manufacturing sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY RIMERA ALNAS (RIMERA ALNAS) is a Russia-based company that operates in the machinery and equipment manufacturing industry.
  • PUBLIC JOINT STOCK COMPANY IZHNEFTEMASH (IZHNEFTEMASH) is a Russia-based company that operates in the machinery and equipment manufacturing industry.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY RIMERA (LLC RIMERA) is a Russia-based company that operates in the machinery and equipment manufacturing industry.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following are being designated for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy.

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY FEDOROVO MINERALZ is a holding company in Russia majority owned by START.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY FEDOROVO KHOLDING is a holding company in Russia.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entities are being designated for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY BYSTRINSKAYA MINING COMPANY is a Russia-based company that is involved in the mining of ores of other non-ferrous metals, as well as mining of ores and sands of precious metals.
  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY FEDOROVO RISORSES is a Russia-based company involved in mining of ores of other non-ferrous metals.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(i), the following entity is being designated for operating or having operated in the management consulting sector of the Russian Federation economy:

  • JOINT STOCK COMPANY RIMERA (JSC RIMERA) is a Russia-based company that provides consulting services.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(vii), the following entities are being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, JSC RIMERA, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the Order:

  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY RIMERA SERVIS (RIMERA SERVIS) is a Russia-based company solely owned by JSC RIMERA that provides services to oil and natural gas companies.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY API FAKTORI (API FAKTORI) is a Russia-based company solely owned by JSC RIMERA that conducts research and development in natural sciences and engineering.
  • LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY HYPERSPACE TECHNOLOGIES (HYPERSPACE TECHNOLOGIES) is a Russia-based company solely owned by JSC RIMERA that conducts computer programming activities.

Targeting Individuals Involved in the Forced Transfer, Deportation, and/or “Re-education” of Ukraine’s Children

The Department continues to impose sanctions on persons involved in the forcible transfer and/or deportation of Ukraine’s children to camps promoting indoctrination of children in Russia, Belarus, and Russia-occupied Crimea. Today’s actions demonstrate the United States’ commitment to promoting accountability for the atrocities and other abuses inflicted by the Government of the Russian Federation on the people of Ukraine.

  • BORIS VYACHESLAVOVICH GRYZLOV (GRYZLOV) is the current Russian Ambassador to Belarus and is involved in transferring Ukrainian children to Belarus. GRYZLOV has stated that children will continue to be deported from Ukraine as a part of the official policy of the Government of the Russian Federation.
  • DMITRIY FEDOROVICH MEZENTSEV (MEZENTSEV) is the Secretary of State of the Union State between Belarus and Russia. MEZENTSEV is Russia’s former Ambassador to Belarus and has personally helped organize the transportation of children from Ukraine to Belarus. MEZENTSEV announced a resolution from the Union State to “host” 1,050 children from Ukraine in Belarus and has visited camps where deported children from Ukraine are staying.
  • ALEXEY KONSTANTINOVICH TALAI (TALAI) and his foundation have orchestrated the transport of multiple groups of children from Ukraine to Belarus. The deportations to Belarus have been funded by the Union State, an economic and political union between Moscow and Minsk. The Union State had already given tens of millions of rubbles to support TALAI’s efforts.
  • ALLA VIKTOROVNA BARKHATNOVA (BARKHATNOVA) is the so-called Head of the Department of Labor and Social Policy of Russia’s occupation administration in Kherson and stated that occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast are working to increase the number of children who go on “trips” to “health recreation” camps in Russia. BARKHATNOVA is also identified as being personally involved in the transportation of Ukrainian children.
  • VITALIY KONSTANTINOVICH GANCHEV is the Head of the Military-Civilian Administration of Russia’s occupation administration in the Kharkiv Region and is identified as being one of the individuals involved in deporting and “re-educating” Ukrainian children.

Pursuant to section 1(a)(iii)(A), the following individuals are being designated for being or having been leaders, officials, senior executive officers, or members of the board of directors of the Government of the Russian Federation:

  • VLADIMIR VIKTOROVICH KHROMOV (KHROMOV) is a Representative for the Commissioner of Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation and is involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children from Russia-occupied regions of Ukraine.
  • AKHMED MAKHMUDOVICH DUDAEV (DUDAEV) is the Minister of National Policy, Foreign Relations, Press and Information of Chechnya and organized trips to deport Ukrainian children.

Imposing Visa Restrictions on Russian Federation-installed Purported Authorities Involved in Human Rights Abuses in Connection with the Transfer, Deportation and Confinement of Ukraine’s Children

Additionally, the Department is taking steps to impose visa restrictions on five Russia-installed purported officials, including one immediate family member, for their involvement in human rights abuses of Ukrainian civilian minors, in connection with the transfer, deportation, and confinement of Ukraine’s children by Russian Federation and Russia-backed authorities.

This action is taken under the Immigration and Nationality Act 212(a)(3)(C) visa policy approved by Secretary Blinken in May 2022 to restrict visa issuance to Russian Federation military officials and Russia-backed or Russia-installed purported authorities who are believed to have been involved in human rights abuses, violations of international humanitarian law, or public corruption in Ukraine, and immediate family members of such individuals, as appropriate.

SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS

As a result of today’s sanctions-related actions, and in accordance with E.O. 14024, as amended, all property and interests in property of the sanctioned persons described above that are in the United States or in possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Additionally, all individuals or entities that have ownership, either directly or indirectly, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked.

All transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons are prohibited unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC or exempt. These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

The power and integrity of U.S. government sanctions derive not only from the U.S. government’s ability to designate and add persons to the SDN List, but also from its willingness to remove persons from the SDN List consistent with the law. The ultimate goal of sanctions is not to punish, but to bring about a positive change in behavior.

Petitions for removal from the SDN List may be sent to: [email protected]. Petitioners may also refer to the Department of State’s Delisting Guidance page.

For more information on E.O. 14024, as amended , see full tex t.

U.S. Department of State

The lessons of 1989: freedom and our future.

was designated driver

'Nobody should die crossing the street': Officials remind everyone to stay alert on Colerain Ave.

A person walks in the designated mid-block crosswalk on Colerain Ave. near Banning Rd.

Colerain Ave. in Colerain Township is a major — and busy — thoroughfare. Township officials and the Ohio Department of Transportation are reminding drivers to slow down, and for pedestrians to use marked crosswalks.

"Over the last five years, 39 pedestrians have been involved in accidents in the corridor, including five fatalities," said Jeff McElravy, assistant administrator of finance and development for Colerain Township. He added there has been at least one crash nearly every day in 2024.

ODOT added a mid-block, designated pedestrian crosswalk with rapid flashing beacons near Banning Rd. in 2021. The agency said Thursday it recently added a traffic camera to monitor the crossing and area near Colerain and Banning. It also plans to adjust the timing of the lights and make other improvements to make the crosswalk more obvious to drivers, encouraging them to slow down and be more alert when its in use. Additional static signage has also been adding and more lights are expected in the coming months.

"We're also working actively working with Duke [Energy] right now to explore adding lighting from Kipling Ave. all the way up to Galbraith, so they're exploring options and how to best get that installed on the corridor," said Bree Hetzel, ODOT district traffic studies engineer.

RELATED: ODOT to install automated cameras, billboards targeting Ohio highway crashes

"We are analyzing other long-range enhancements that will improve the safety not only here, but [along] the entire corridor, based on these pedestrian crashes," she added.

Officials say many people continue to cross Colerain Ave. mid-block, outside of designated crossings. They want that to stop, and are pushing hard to encourage folks to use marked crossings at intersections and the designated mid-block crossing.

Hetzel says everyone — drivers and pedestrians — need to pay more attention and eliminate distractions, like using smartphones while driving or while crossing the street. A good tip, she says, is for pedestrians to make eye contact with drivers.

"Our key message today is for drivers to slow down," McElravy concluded. "Stay alert. Eliminate distractions. Nobody should have to die for crossing the street."

was designated driver

IMAGES

  1. Designated Driver

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  2. You Know You're a Designated Driver if

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  3. Designated driver Meaning

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  4. The Pros Of Being The Designated Driver

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  5. Plan Ahead for Safety

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  6. 40% Of Designated Drivers Drink And Then Drive

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COMMENTS

  1. Designated driver

    The terms " designated driver " and " designated driving " (commonly known as DD) refer to the selection of a person who remains sober as the responsible driver of a vehicle whilst others have been allowed to drink alcoholic beverages . Thus, as a practical and ethical matter a designated driver is a person who abstains from alcohol on an ...

  2. Designated driver Definition & Meaning

    The meaning of DESIGNATED DRIVER is a person chosen to abstain from intoxicants (such as alcohol) so as to transport others safely who are not abstaining. How to use designated driver in a sentence.

  3. How to Stick to the Plan of Using a Designated Driver

    How to choose a designated driver wisely: Pick a responsible and safe driver with a valid driver's license and current automobile insurance. Choose someone who is able to resist temptation and not drink. Many bars or events will provide alcoholic-free beverages, or other perks, to designated drivers. Find a reliable person who will either ...

  4. What Does It Mean to be a Designated Driver?

    The designated driver remains sober by refusing and abstaining from ALL alcohol or mind-altering substances. They have one job: keeping others safe by staying sober behind the wheel. Harvard University launched its designated driver program in 1988. Within 6 years of the program's creation, drunk driving fatalities had decreased by a whopping ...

  5. People Don't Seem to Get What 'Designated Driver' Means

    The authors surveyed 165 designated drivers who were exiting bars in Florida, asking them what they'd had to drink, if anything, and giving them a Brethalyzer test. Currently, 0.08 is the cut ...

  6. History of Designated Driving

    The concept of the "designated driver" was originally developed in Scandinavia during the 1920s. Seeing that alcohol-related traffic fatalities were the leading cause of deaths among individuals ages 15-24, the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Health Communication imported it to the U.S. in 1988 with the creation of the Harvard Alcohol Project.

  7. DESIGNATED DRIVER definition

    designated driver meaning: 1. one person in a group who agrees not to drink alcohol in order to drive the other people to and…. Learn more.

  8. Designated Driving: How to Make a Designated Driver Plan

    A designated driver is essential for everyone to get home safely. They are an integral part of keeping roads safe. Educating friends and family about the designated driver concept can help reduce the number of vehicle accidents and deaths. Whether volunteers or paid, the designated driver of any group has a big responsibility.

  9. Rethinking the role of the designated driver

    A designated driver plays a critical role in getting everyone home safe and sound, but based on both anecdotal and empirical findings, demonstrating that being the "DD" can actually be fun was seen as a challenge in many communities. Research conducted by the USDOT Federal Highway Administration found that there was limited awareness of the ...

  10. Harvard case study examines the origins of the CHC, lessons learned

    However, designated drivers who do exceed the legal limit, like any driver who does so, are at greater risk of crashing and endangering their passengers. The uptake in the use of designated drivers was greatest among young adults. In the 1993 National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behavior, sponsored by NHTSA, 59% of young adults ...

  11. What The 'Designated Driver' Campaign Could Teach Us About How ...

    Among the challenges for public health professionals: getting people to take precautions. Jay Winsten was the architect of the U.S. "Designated Driver" campaign that focused on shifting the ...

  12. DESIGNATED DRIVER

    DESIGNATED DRIVER definition: 1. one person in a group who agrees not to drink alcohol in order to drive the other people to and…. Learn more.

  13. Harvard Alcohol Project: Designated Driver

    However, designated drivers who do exceed the legal limit, like any driver who does so, are at greater risk of crashing and endangering their passengers. The uptake in the use of designated drivers was greatest among young adults. In the 1993 National Survey of Drinking and Driving Attitudes and Behavior, sponsored by NHTSA, 59% of young adults ...

  14. How To Be the Designated Driver—and Still Have Fun

    A designated driver's main role is to avoid drinking and ensure their friends get home without endangering themselves or others. This could also involve keeping an eye out for friends while still at the bar, but how actively the DD does this is up to their specific group. If you want to know how to be a designated driver, it's important to ...

  15. 6 Tips on Committing to a Designated Driving Plan

    Designated drivers are a relatively recent phenomenon. Alcohol.org informs us that the Harvard Alcohol Project was launched in 1988 to address the epidemic of drunk driving accidents and fatalities the country still experiences—over one auto accident per hour occurs due to a drunk driver, according to the Centers for Disease Control or CDC.

  16. The Designated Driver Campaign: Why It Worked

    The Designated Driver message could be incorporated with a line or two of dialogue, and did not require major changes in character development or the story line. The issue of drunken driving hit close to home for many members of the Hollywood community whose teenage children were potentially at risk. And, for many others in the creative ...

  17. The Designated Driver

    The Designated Driver. by Jerald Walker. I arrived at the faculty meeting as a few hundred students stormed the room, chanting about campus-wide racism, demanding justice. Most of the students were white, there to support their black peers as they aired grievances. After a while some of the speakers began to cry, which fueled my growing unease.

  18. 3 Ways to Choose a Designated Driver

    Confirming the Plan. 1. Select your designated driver before you begin drinking. Avoid deciding that your group will need a designated driver after the first round of drinks. It is very dangerous to decide who will be the designated driver based off of the person who is the least drunk or has had the least to drink. 2.

  19. Designated Driver and Programs

    Designated drivers are people who agree not to drink so they can drive their friends who have been drinking. Formal designated driver programs in drinking establishments provide incentives such as free soft drinks for people who agree to be designated drivers. Usually, designated driver arrangements are completely informal. Surveys show that nearly all U.S. drivers agree that having a ...

  20. DESIGNATED DRIVER Definition & Usage Examples

    Designated driver definition: a person who abstains from alcoholic beverages at a gathering in order to be fit to drive companions home safely. Abbreviation. See examples of DESIGNATED DRIVER used in a sentence.

  21. Promoting Designated Drivers: The Harvard Alcohol Project

    The designated driver concept is a new component of the nation's comprehensive strategy for reducing alcohol-related traffic fatalities through prevention, deterrence, and treatment. This article explains how the designated driver concept serves as a vehicle for changing social norms, describes the national designated driver campaign and the involvement of the public and private sectors, and ...

  22. Characteristics of Designated Drivers and their Passengers from the

    Conclusions. Designated driving is widely used in the United States, with the majority of designated drivers abstaining from drinking alcohol. However as designated driving separates drinking from driving for passengers in a group travelling together, this may encourage passengers to binge drink, which is associated with many adverse health consequences in addition to those arising from ...

  23. At 12 Years Old I Was My Dad's Designated Driver When He Drank

    I was my dad's designated driver when I was 12. Now that I'm older, I understand his pain. The author's dad driving his truck. My dad grew up on the US-Mexico border in a house on the banks of the ...

  24. Key takeaways from Donald Trump's immunity claim before Supreme Court

    Here are the top takeaways about the Supreme Court's decision to hear Donald Trump's claim of immunity against charges he tried to steal the 2020 election.

  25. Responding to Two Years of Russia's Full-Scale War On Ukraine and

    BULYUK is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(ii)(F) for being responsible for or complicit in, or having directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, activities that undermine the peace, security, political stability, or territorial integrity of the United States, its allies, or its partners, for or on behalf of, or for the ...

  26. First Airman graduates Marine Corps Designated Marksman Course

    U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Erik Johannes, 1st Fighter Wing weapons safety representative, leaves his rank and name on the back of the Designated Marksmanship Course sign after the graduation of United States Marine Corps Designated Marksman Course class 2-24, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Virginia, Feb. 14, 2024.

  27. Medical device lobby: We're tired of waiting on Medicare coverage

    In a searing letter, device lobby AdvaMed urged CMS to finalize a Medicare coverage pathway for FDA-designated breakthrough devices.

  28. 'Nobody should die crossing the street': Officials remind ...

    Despite the dangers, people are still crossing the road outside of designated crosswalks. Officials want drivers to slow down, and everyone to stay alert. Some improvements are coming, too.