Impaired Driving

Overview

Alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes kill someone every 31 minutes and nonfatally injure someone every two minutes (NHTSA 2004a).
 
Occurrence and Consequences

During 2003, 17,013 people in the U.S. died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, representing 40% of all traffic-related deaths (NHTSA 2004a).
 
In 2002, about 1.5 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics (NHTSA 2004a). That’s slightly more than one percent of the 120 million self-reported episodes of alcohol–impaired driving among U.S. adults each year (Dellinger 1999).
 
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 (NHTSA 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).