Every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle accidents that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This amounts to at least one death every single hour.
And the consequences of alcohol-impaired driving are not limited to fatalities. Horrifying and tragic stories of drunk-driving accidents repeatedly fill the news headlines. On August 21, 2013, at least seven people, including two police officers, were injured in a car wreck that began with a pursuit of a suspected drunk driver and ended in a multi-vehicle collision in Brooklyn, NY.
The list of horrifying crashes goes on and on. On August 6, 2013, two young men were gruesomely killed and two others were critically injured when their vehicle was T-boned by a vehicle driven by a 20-year-old, who has now been charged with vehicular homicide and drunken driving in connection with the crash, in Maplewood, NJ. On August 11, 2013, a 34-year-old man, who was driving with his 3-year-old son in the vehicle, was arrested for driving while intoxicated in connection with a crash that injured at least one, in Amityville, NY. The same weekend, a 34-year-old was killed and injured another driver, when she slammed into another vehicle while driving the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway in Yorktown, NY; on August 14th, police revealed that she had a blood-alcohol level of four times the legal limit at the time of the fatal crash.
According to recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol-impaired motor vehicle accidents account for nearly one third of all traffic-related deaths. All 50 States (as of 2011), had by law created a threshold making it illegal per se to drive with a BAC of .08 or higher. Sixty-six percent (6,507) of the 9,878 people who died in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes in 2011 were drivers with a BAC of .08 or higher. Over 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics in 2010, but this number is only one percent of the 112 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among U.S. adults each year.
Despite campaigns promoting awareness and criminal laws prohibiting drunk driving, these tragic accidents clearly continue to occur all too frequently.
Block O’Toole & Murphy, LLP fights to protect the rights of those injured, or tragically killed, in alcohol-impaired-driving accidents and other motor vehicle collisions. The motor vehicle accident attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy have unparalleled experience and knowledge, and have obtained more than $700 million in verdicts and settlements. The personal injury trial attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy are available for a free consultation at 212-736-5300.
Source: CDC.gov and news stories