300,000 Incidents of Drunk Driving
Just how common is drinking and driving? You may think every other person on the road on any given Saturday night is drunk, and you’d be close to right.
It’s estimated about 11,000 people died in crashes in 2009 involving alcohol-impaired drivers, or one in three crashes resulted in death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 112 million incidents of drinking and driving occurred in 2010. This translates to about 300,000 times every day.
The study published in the CDC’s Vital Signs on Tuesday, October 4, relied on data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. It finds:
- Young men ages 21 to 34 make up only 11% of the population but were involved in 32% of all drunken driving episodes.
- This is overwhelmingly a male problem. The study found 81% of drinking and driving incidents in 2010 involved men.
- The worst offenders were involved in binge drinking; this means men had five or more drinks at one time and women had four or more drinks.
The Solution to the Public Health Problem of Drunk Driving
To address the problem, the study concludes:
- Keep sobriety checkpoints
- Maintain the minimum legal drinking age at 21 (currently it’s 21 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia)
- Ignition interlocks prevent drivers who have past drunk driving convictions from operating their vehicles if they have been drinking
The Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) reports that in 2008, 39.5% of traffic fatalities were alcohol-related and 9.1% of traffic crashes were alcohol-related. In 2009-2010, there were 9,605 DUI arrests and in 2009, among the 2,563 fatalities on Florida roads, 1,004 were alcohol-related.
In auto accidents where drunk driving is involved, the victim can seek compensation for his or her medical expenses, rehabilitation, and lost wages, as well as for pain and suffering. The experienced Florida drunk driving accident lawyers at Farah & Farah can guide the accident victim through the process to help them seek compensation.
Source: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/10/cdc-112-million-annual-incidents-of-drunken-driving.html; http://www.flhsmv.gov/html/FactsFigures/0911.pdf; http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/
