How does drunk driving cause accidents

Another solution, this one on a large scale, was to raise the minimum drinking age nation-wide from years old to 21 in July of In alone, lives were saved by year old minimum drinking age laws according to Traffic Safety Facts.

In some states, DUI offenders are required to install a key-ignition lock on their car that has an attached breathalyzer. If these drivers attempt to drive under the influence DUI of alcohol, the car will not start. As car accident attorneys, we have the ability to bring the wrongdoers to civil justice, while the criminal charges are left to the District Attorney.

Sometimes, the D. The good news is that the drunk driving accident statistics have actually declined in recent years. The total number of fatal car accidents involving a DUI have declined for two years in a row after a decade high of 13, in , and the fatality rate, per million vehicle miles of travel VMT , in car accidents hit a record low of 0.

These car accident statistics are still not low enough, but it is a start. If we can continue to educate people on the dangers of drunk-driving DUI car accidents, then maybe we will one day eliminate these terrible auto accidents.

Just remember, one drink is too many if you plan on driving, so always have a sober person take care of the driving. Call Us Now if You've Been Injured by a Drunk Driver If you've been injured in a car accident with a drunk driver then call us now at or click here for a FREE consultation with an experienced automobile accident attorney.

Your insurance claim will be handled professionally at our San Diego law office , which has two decades of experience dealing primarily with automobile accident injuries. We look forward to providing good advice so that you can make smart decisions about your case. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Impaired Driving: Get the Facts. Minus Related Pages. Adults, — Source: CDC. Who is most at risk?

Young people: At all levels of blood alcohol concentration BAC , the risk of being involved in a crash is greater for young people than for older people. What are the effects of blood alcohol concentration BAC? How can deaths and injuries from impaired driving be prevented? Effective measures include: Actively enforcing existing 0. Participants were investigated after drinking driving with BAC level of 0. They were required to fill out the questionnaire contrasting with their feelings when normal driving.

Each aspect of the investigation included three options, which meant worse, invariant, and better, respectively, contrast with normal driving. For example, the three options for safety attitude were adventurous, invariant, and cautious. The objective of the analysis was to explore the signatures of alcohol impairment. The data was analyzed according to the following method. The indicator value of each participant was the mean of all his driving sections excluding accident sections.

ANOVA with repeated measures was used to analyze the differences of each indicator at the four states. The pairwise comparison was analyzed using post hoc -test. Firstly, all the drinking driving states at different BAC levels were put in one group to identify normal driving state without considering different BAC levels; then, drinking driving states with different BAC levels were separately distinguished from normal driving state.

Compared with normal state, drivers described their feelings under the influence of alcohol after drinking simulation driving. The distribution of the investigation results for 25 subjects was shown in Figure 3.

The driving attitude and safety attitude showed driving tendencies of drivers. It indicated that most subjects admitted that they had the tendency of sensation-seeking and were more adventurous under the influence of alcohol.

It was revealed in Figure 3 that all of the abilities on perception, attention, direction-sense, judgment, controlling, and reaction of most drivers were impaired by alcohol. More than half of subjects felt that the vehicle moved slowly, which might make them drive much faster. Each participant drove 10 straight roadway segments and each section was meters long. There were some accidents in their simulated driving process. Some drivers rush out or drove into the guardrail in center of the road.

At different driving states, we defined accident rate that the ratio of the total number of the segments including accidents of all participants divided the total number of urban straight roadway segments of all participants had driven. The accident rate at different states was shown in Table 2. The accident rate 1. Table 2 showed that the higher BAC level induced higher accident rate, which indicated that driving ability was impaired more seriously at higher BAC level.

Driving performance data was analyzed to reveal the effect characteristics of drunk driving on running vehicle. The means of all subjects of each indicator at different driving states were shown in Figure 4.

The main differences between normal driving and drinking driving were analyzed with ANOVA method firstly. The quadratic trend was not significant.

There was no significant difference among the three BAC levels. Of the within-subjects effects, the main effect of BAC was also statistically significant, , , and partial. Based on the width of road lane, the best value of lane position was 1.

Figure 4 c showed that drivers when normal driving had a left driving tendency than center of lane, but with right tendency than center of lane when drinking driving. The main effect of BAC of the within-subjects effects was statistically significant, , , and partial. There was no significant difference in other comparisons. The results of the ANOVA analysis above showed that there are no significant differences of indicators at different BAC levels of drinking driving states.

But significant differences were found for some indicators between normal state and drinking driving states. It was indicated that the indicators in urban straight roadway segment might support the discrimination of two states: normal and drinking driving, but they were difficult to support the classification of different BAC levels.

To explore the discriminant ability of the driving performance indicators, firstly, the data at the three BAC levels were integrated into one group to distinguish normal state; then, drinking driving states at the three BAC levels were considered one group, respectively, to identify normal state. Therefore, four different discriminant functions were established based on the significant indicators. It was confirmed that each indicator in the drinking driving states and normal states was significantly different.

The data met the conditions of using Fisher discriminant method based on the statistical results. For the discriminant of drinking driving states including all BAC levels and normal states, the standardized discriminant function is where is the discriminant score and means the standardized indicator. The result showed that the discriminant function was statistically significant at the significance level 0.

Discriminant score of each driving state can be calculated through the above function directly. Similarly, the standardized discriminant function to identify drinking driving states at BAC level of 0. The standardized discriminant function to identify drinking driving states at BAC level of 0.

Each function was used to classify the corresponding groups of driving states to validate the accuracy. The accuracy rate included classification of original group and cross-validated, in which each case is classified by the functions derived from all cases other than this case. The accuracy rates of the four functions were shown in Table 3. It showed that the higher the BAC level was, the higher the accuracy rate of the corresponding function was.

The accuracy rate of function 3 , which was used to classify the normal state group and drinking driving state group with three BAC levels, was close to the middle of the accuracy rates of other three functions.

The statistical results of the questionnaire showed that most of the participants admitted that they were affected by alcohol on many aspects. Under the influence of alcohol, drivers exhibited the characteristics of being impulsive, sensation-seeking, adventurous, and moving faster. At the same time, the ability of judgment, recognition, reaction, and operation were impaired. Therefore, drinking driving will produce a high probability to serious accidents.

The analysis of accident rate showed that the accident rate increased with the BAC level and it was significantly higher for drinking drivers than for normal drivers. It indicated that even in the simple environment, drinking driving had a high probability to result in an accident. Although the accident rate may differ from the actual situation, the trend is credible.

Sensation-seeking makes drivers show the high-speed traveling state. Because of the decline of perception, more than half of the participants felt the speed slower which was another reason of high-speed travelling. The decline of driving ability decreases the steadiness of vehicle travelling speed.

In a word, alcohol will cause high vehicle speed and unsteady travelling both in vertical and transverse movement.

They are the direct reasons of traffic accident caused by drunk driving. Avoid drinking too much in the first place and avoid binge drinking. Eat a meal. A healthy meal before drinking can help slow down the absorption of alcohol. Alternate your drinks. Make sure to drink water or soft drinks to slow down the rate you consume alcohol. Talk to someone Drinkchat is our free online chat service. Alcohol support services. Support Services.

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