Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day is the most dangerous time of year for alcohol-related issues. Updated for 2017, the Holiday Drinking & DUI infographic by “Sobering Up” tells the story of impaired driving over the winter holidays. One key data point: 40% of traffic-related deaths during the holidays are caused by drunk driving.
People believe they know their limits. They have a couple of drinks at the holiday party at work, then get behind the wheel. Or they enjoy wine at a relative’s dinner party, followed by a spiked egg nog or two (or three) before bundling the family in the car to drive home.
Time and again, drivers who have had a couple of drinks put themselves and others at risk. You don’t have to be falling-down drunk to be too impaired to drive.
Here’s a sobering statistic but one worth noting: drunk driving is still the No. 1 cause of death on U.S. roadways.
Every two minutes someone is injured in a crash that involves alcohol, and a person dies every 51 minutes in alcohol-related road accidents. That’s a lot of needless tragedy.
Alcohol-impaired crashes (where a driver had a blood alcohol content [BAC] of 0.08 or higher) plays a significant role in the overall increase in traffic fatalities. Data from the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration (NTHSA) shows that overall traffic deaths and alcohol-involved road fatalities increased in 2016 over the previous year. It’s the first time in more than a decade that deaths on America’s roads had increased for two consecutive years. Nearly 2,000 more people died on U.S. roads in 2016 compared to 2015, up 5.6%.
These statistics add fuel to concerns that progress on reducing drunk driving is slowing down. The number of alcohol-impaired traffic deaths has stubbornly hovered near 10,000 per year since 2010. Dips below 10,000 deaths in 2011 and 2014 suggested that things were moving in the right direction, but a consistent downward trend has hit the brakes, and with tragic results.
If you drink, please don’t become a statistic. Arrange for someone who’s sober to drive you home.
Lifelong poetic justice license-holder. Unapologetic cat lover. A former newspaper editor and co-founder of HealthDiscovery.org, Ellen was the Director of Corporate Communications for national employee benefits broker Corporate Synergies before retiring in 2020. She developed corporate messaging, oversaw media relations, and wrote and edited articles for the company’s blog, The Knowledge Center.