Florida Drunk Driving Roadway Deaths Rise In 2007

Alcohol, speed, no seat belts cost many lives!
Speed, alcohol and bad decisions continue to take a tragic toll on Brevard County roadways, costing 100 people their lives in 93 traffic accidents last year, law enforcement records from 2006 show.

• That's 6 percent more people than 2005 and 25 percent more than the year before that.

The death rate doesn't appear to be abating. Less than a month into 2007, some 10 people have died on Brevard roadways, including three teens involved in a motorcycle accident after a birthday party.

Last year's death toll included a pair of teens coming home from an open house party where booze was served to minors. The toll also included pedestrians impaired by alcohol walking into traffic, tired truckers not wearing their seat belts and helmetless motorcyclists speeding on city streets.

Many, if not most, of those fatal mistakes could have been avoided had the victims obeyed the speed limit, worn seat belts or helmets and not been under the influence, officers said.

"It's a choice you make," Lt. Patrick O'Neill of the Florida Highway Patrol said. "If you make the wrong one you're going to die."

Alcohol is a killer

As in years past, alcohol was the biggest killer on the road in 2006, according to a FLORIDA TODAY analysis of FHP and local police accident reports. Alcohol or drug impairment was a factor in 40 percent of last year's fatalities. That's the highest it's been in years. In 2005, alcohol was a factor in 33 percent of all fatalities.

According to county medical examiner records, at least nine drunken pedestrians wandered into traffic, at least two drunken drivers hit and killed pedestrians, and at least two other people drove themselves into a pond or lake and drowned with more than the legal limit of alcohol in their blood. At least two people combined drinking with driving ATVs to deadly effect.

Alcohol claimed the lives of at least two teenagers last year in a rollover accident. Driver Morgan Gordon, 16, and passenger Chelsea Beck, 17, were on their way home from an open house party in Port St. John, where they'd both been drinking heavily enough to have nearly three times the legal alcohol limit for adults in their blood.