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Drunk Driving
The Truth about Drunk Driving and other Drunk Driving Statistics - One of the most extraordinary of all drunk driving facts is that impaired driving affects one out of every three Americans during their lifetimes. Occurrence and Consequences • Alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes kill someone every 30 minutes. • Non-fatal alcohol-related crashes injure someone every two minutes. • 17,448 people in the U.S. died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes during 2001. This represents 41% of all traffic-related deaths. • Approximately 1.5 million drivers were arrested in 2000 for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. That's just over 1% of the estimated 120 million or more episodes of impaired driving that occur among U.S. adults each year. • Drugs other than alcohol (e.g., marijuana and cocaine) have been identified as factors in 18% of deaths among motor vehicle drivers. Other drugs are generally used in combination with alcohol. |
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• Nearly two-thirds of children under
15 who died in alcohol-related crashes between 1985 and 1996 were
riding with the drinking driver. More than two-thirds of the drinking
drivers were old enough to be the parent of the child who was killed,
and fewer than 20% of the children killed were properly restrained
at the time of the crash.  CostIn its publication The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that alcohol-related crashes in 2000 were associated with more than $51 billion in total costs. Groups at Risk • Male drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes are almost twice as likely as female drivers to be intoxicated with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.10% or greater. A BAC of 0.10% is equal to or greater than the legal limit in all states. • At all levels of blood alcohol concentration, the risk of being involved in a crash is greater for young people than it is for older people. In 2001, 25% of drivers ages 15 to 20 who died in motor vehicle crashes had been drinking alcohol. • Young men ages 18 to 20 (still under the legal drinking age) report driving while impaired almost as frequently as men ages 21 to 34. • In 2000, 23% of the 2,197 traffic fatalities among children ages 0 to 14 years involved alcohol. Risk Factors • Adult drivers ages 35 and older who have been arrested for impaired driving are 11 to 12 times more likely than those who have never been arrested to die in crashes involving alcohol. • Nearly three quarters of drivers convicted of driving while impaired are either frequent heavy drinkers or alcoholics. Prevention Strategies Effective measures to prevent injuries and deaths from impaired driving include:  •
Promptly suspending the driver's licenses of people who drive while
intoxicated.• Lowering the permissible levels of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) for adults to 0.08% in all states. • Zero tolerance laws for drivers younger than 21 years old in all states. • Sobriety checkpoints. • Multi-faceted community-based approaches to alcohol control and DUI prevention. • Reducing the legal limit for blood alcohol concentration. • Raising state and federal alcohol excise taxes. • Implementing compulsory blood alcohol testing when traffic crashes result in injury. Drunk Driving Statistics Drunk driving is known in some states as DUI (driving under the influence), DWI (driving while intoxicated) and OWI (operating while intoxicated). However, regardless of what you choose to call it, it's drunk driving. Drunk driving is impaired driving, and impaired driving increases the probability that you'll become one of the many drunk driving statistics that occur every two minutes. As if the drunk driving facts aren't scary enough, the laws and the penalties for drunk drivers are becoming more harsh… but never forget the most important drunk driving fact of all, the consequences for the victims are always present and remain the same. Source: NHTNA, Shults, Howat, Bincoe, Liu, De Jong, Brewer, and the National Committee on Injury Prevention and Control 1989. |
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