Recent statistics have shown that a shocking number of alcohol-impaired driving episodes result in Florida car crash fatalities as well as injury and death throughout the United States. Crashes, injuries and deaths that are caused because a driver had been drinking before getting behind the wheel are 100 percent preventable.
But, statistics paint a very poor picture of prevention of Miami fatal car accidents and elsewhere in the U.S. In 2009, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistics show that 30,797 people were killed in vehicle crashes — 10,839 of which involved drivers with a blood alcohol content of .08 or higher. That is a factor of more than one in three, with a fatal alcohol-related crash occurring every 48 minutes.
The statistics further revealed that the highest percentage of drivers with an alcohol content of .08 or higher were age 21-24 years old (35 percent), followed by ages 25-34 (32 percent) and then ages 35-44 (26 percent).
Fatal crashes involving drunken driving were 29 percent for motorcycles, 23 percent for both passenger cars and light trucks and less than two percent for large trucks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report that analyzed data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey to estimate the numbers of alcohol-impaired driving among adults 18 years or older. The results showed that four million adults reported an estimated 112 million episodes of alcohol-impaired driving in the U.S. in 2010.
When those surveyed were asked how many times they had driven after maybe having had too much to drink during the past 30 days, 1.8 percent reported that they had at least one episode of alcohol-impaired driving during that period. Sixty percent of respondents admitted doing it only once - but some said they drove while impaired every day.
The CDC report showed that there is a disproportionately high rate of alcohol-impaired driving episodes among people who don't wear seat belts, binge drinkers and young men.
There is some good news in the CDC report: The numbers from 2010 were the lowest percentage of drinking drivers and the lowest number of reported alcohol-impaired episodes since 1993, which represented a substantial decline of 30 percent since 2006.
But the report's most significant observation is that strategies to reduce drunken driving are under-used in the U.S. An increase in sobriety checkpoints and stronger enforcement of legal drinking-age laws were among the measures the CDC report recommended to reduce drunken driving. If you were injured in a drunk-driving crash, you have rights. Miami automobile accident attorneys can explain your options to you and help you pursue recovery from the drunk driver who caused your injury.