There’s plenty of things are good separately but horrible together, one of those things is alcohol and driving. Every day, 28 people in the United States died due to alcohol related accidents. One thing for sure is that death is inevitable, but every day 28 people have their lives cut short when their death could have been prevented. Driving under influence has become a huge social issue in the United States so much so that a new federal legislation was introduced requiring all new cars to have a passive alcohol detection system by 2024.
Many laws have been put in places to lower that amount of death caused by drunk driving, laws like the Zero Tolerance laws, Open Container laws and BAC laws. Many of the laws I mention have help reduced the number of drunk drivers on the road. The Zero Tolerance law started back in 1990, the account for teenage drivers driving drunk, the law stated that any under 21 should not have readable measurement, to enforce the passing of this law, the NHSDA cut funding to any states not willing to pass the law. By 1998 all states had a form of the Zero Tolerance in law, reducing the portion of underage drinking drivers in crashes by 24 percent. BAC laws were also a big help in reducing the number of drunk drivers on the road, BAC laws came with ALR which gave the governing body the right take away the driver license even to the point that refusing to the take BAC testing was grounds to take the driver’s license.
Ying, Yung-Hsiang, et al. “The Effectiveness of Drinking and Driving Policies for Different Alcohol-Related Fatalities: A Quantile Regression Analysis.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, MDPI, 27 Sept. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3823314/.
In the past 10 years from 2006 to 2016 almost 31% of all motor vehicle fatalities were because of alcohol impaired driving. In 2016, among all alcohol-impaired driving crash fatalities, 6,479 deaths were drivers who had BAC levels of 0.08% or higher, 3,070 were motor vehicle occupants, and 948 were nonoccupants. 3,070 who were mostly likely to driving at higher speeds and misjudging the way other cars were going to move around them cutting their own lives short in such a preventable death now there’s a lot of way to stop these deaths, one rare one is sobriety checkpoints, where they do seem to work but our outlawed in some states due to their own interpretation of the constitution. Article also states how the per capita consumption of alcohol in the United States is in the lowest average, but it also reported the highest number of alcohol-related driving fatalities.
Sciences, National Academies of, et al. “Current Environment: Alcohol, Driving, and Drinking and Driving.” Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities: A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 17 Jan. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500051/
Theres many other ways to prevent a drunk driver from in even starting their car the most know of is installing an ignition interlock device. An ignition interlock device is a breath test device connected to a vehicle’s ignition. The vehicle cannot be operated unless the driver blows into the interlock and has a BAC below a pre-set low limit, usually .02 g/dL. This is a big deterrent that stops multiple offenders from accessing their vehicle. The charges associated with being caught driving drunk are also big stop to people who are in the verge of driving drug, charges range from misdemeanors to felony offenses, and penalties for impaired driving can include driver’s license revocation, fines, and jail time
“Drunk Driving.” NHTSA, 4 Mar. 2021, www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving.
Regardless, humans when under the influence aren’t able to make the decision to not drive, one of the best was to stop 28 people losing their lives is to find a weight for people behind the wheel to be able to stop when they had too much to drink
