Drunk Driving Lawyers Attorneys and Facts

Impaired Driving Overview

Alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes kill someone every 31 minutes and nonfatally injure someone every two minutes (NHTSA 2005).
 
Occurrence and Consequences

During 2004, 16,694 people in the U.S. died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, representing 39% of all traffic-related deaths (NHTSA 2005).
 
In 2004, about 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics (Department of Justice, 2004). That’s less than one percent of the 159 million self-reported episodes of alcohol–impaired driving among U.S. adults each year (Quinlan et al. 2005).
 
Drugs other than alcohol (e.g., marijuana and cocaine) are involved in about 18% of motor vehicle driver deaths. These other drugs are generally used in combination with alcohol (Jones et al. 2003).
  
More than two-thirds of child passengers ages 14 and younger who died in alcohol-related crashes during 1997–2002 were riding with the drinking driver; only 32% of them were properly restrained at the time of the crash (Shults 2004).
 
Cost