Caught in the reflection of the rear view mirror, the red lights flash, signaling the driver to pull over. It’s another drunken driving arrest.

Although people of all ages commit OWI, because of Ames’ young population base, OWI arrests are high in the college age group.

The Iowa Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau reports show that drivers between the ages of 16-25 represent only 16 percent of all registered drivers in Iowa. But they represent 30 percent of all drunken drivers who were involved in fatal crashes during 1992-95. Also, 41 percent of all people who are injured in alcohol-related crashes in Iowa are between the ages of 14-25.

“The OWI situation in Ames is out of control,” said Paul DeVries, manager of Cy’s Roost, a campustown bar.

DeVries estimated that about half of the patrons at Cy’s Roost on any given evening drive to the bar and by the end of the evening it’s questionable if many of them would pass a sobriety test.

He said almost every evening the bartenders at Cy’s Roost call taxis or try to locate friends to drive customers home.

A bartender can be held responsible, and sued, for what happens to an intoxicated patron, DeVries said. When a patron appears intoxicated the bartender is supposed to stop serving them alcohol. Deciding when a patron has reached that point, he said, is a “dicey situation.”

Many young people go out with the plan of “getting wasted,” then fail to have a plan on how they will get home, said Dennis Ballantine, Ames chief of police.

The legal limit to drive is .10 blood-alcohol content, a level that doesn’t take many drinks to reach, Ballantine said. Because everyone varies by size, body chemistry and tolerance, there is no set formula for predicting blood-alcohol content.

However, the punishment for being arrested for OWI doesn’t vary according to size.

Kimberly McNamer, a senior in journalism, found out Feb. 21 exactly what happens when you are arrested for OWI, an experience she thought would never happen to her.

“I learned not to drink and drive. Everyone thinks that it’s not going to happen to them. I thought that, and I got caught. It was an awful experience,” she said.

McNamer said the scariest part of the experience was being handcuffed and spending five hours in jail.

Her punishment hasn’t ended though. Because of the experience, she has discovered who her true friends are, has been embarrassed to know that people know about her arrest, and has been put on high-risk insurance, she said.

Ruth Argenta, an insurance agent at Knapp Tedesco Insurance Agency, said having an OWI arrest can double a person’s insurance premiums. She also said that an individual who is arrested for OWI will have his or her driver’s license suspended. To get it back after the suspension, the state of Iowa requires proof of insurance.

The maximum punishment judges can impose in the state of Iowa for first offense drunken drivers is up to one year in prison and/or a fine of $500 to $1,000.

The Ames Police Department’s year-end report shows arrests for OWI are up from 149 arrests in 1995 to 168 in 1996. Also, the number of women arrested for OWI in 1996 has more than doubled from the previous year.

“Historically, most of the alcohol arrests were men, but now we are becoming more of an equal opportunity arrestor,” Ballantine said.

It’s not difficult for officers to pick out a drunken driver, Ballantine said. The common indicators, he said, are no headlights or headlights on bright, driving too slow and making very wide turns.

When an officer pulls someone over and suspects the individual’s blood-alcohol level may be more than the legal limit, the officer administers field sobriety tests.

Ballantine said there is a wide variety of tests ranging from having the driver touch the tip of his or her nose with a finger, to saying the alphabet backwards, a task he admits he can’t do.

But, the most reliable field test is called the “eye stagmus gaze” a test in which the officer uses a light and a pen or finger to track the eye movements of the driver.

Also, a preliminary breath test, which uses infrared light to measure alcohol vapor in a person’s breath, is mandatory on the scene. Alcohol in the blood system evaporates through the lungs, which allows the breath-test device to measure blood-alcohol levels through one’s breath.