Alcohol Impaired Driving in America
Impaired driving will affect one in three Americans during their
lifetimes (NHTSA)
Occurrence and Consequences
- Alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes kill someone every 30
minutes and non-fatally injure someone every two minutes (NHTSA
2003a).
- During 2002, 17,419 people in the U.S. died in alcohol-related
motor vehicle crashes, representing 41% of all traffic-related
deaths (NHTSA 2003a).
- In 2001, more than 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving
under the influence of alcohol or narcotics (FBI 2001). That’s
slightly more than 1 percent of the 120 million self-reported
episodes of alcohol–impaired driving among U.S. adults each year
(Dellinger 1999).
- Drugs other than alcohol (e.g., marijuana and cocaine) have been
identified as factors in 18% of motor vehicle driver deaths. Other
drugs are generally used in combination with alcohol (NHTSA
1993).
- 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
(Quinlan 2000).
Cost
In 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 (Blincoe 2002).
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 (NHTSA 2003a). A BAC
of 0.08% is equal to or greater than the legal limit in most
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 (Mayhew 1986). In 2002, 24% of drivers ages 15 to 20 who died
in motor vehicle crashes had been drinking alcohol (NHTSA
2003b).
- Young men ages 18 to 20 (too young to buy alcohol legally) report
driving while impaired almost as frequently as men ages 21 to 34
(Liu 1997).
- In 2002, 22% of the 2,197 traffic fatalities among children ages 0
to 14 years involved alcohol (NHTSA 2003c).
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 eventually in crashes involving alcohol
(Brewer 1994).
- Nearly three quarters of drivers convicted of driving while
impaired are either frequent heavy drinkers (alcohol abusers) or
alcoholics (people who are alcohol dependent) (Miller 1986).
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