Drunk Driving Car Crash

Accidents caused due to drunken driving are one of the major-concern issues haunting the US in the past few decades. Drunken driving causes more than 16,000 automobile casualties every year, leading to more than a million deaths. Not to mention the millions of drivers that are arrested for drunken driving each passing year.

Several people who party into the wee hours of the night drive with the drink still inside them. Youth that attend rave parties are susceptible to a more serious problem, as they often mix drugs with their drink. All these activities are deemed not only dangerous but also illegal by law. Drunk driving endangers the lives of the drivers and their passengers as well as other people on the road.

Strict methods are employed by traffic authorities to restrict and impound drunk driving. Measures such as breathalyzers are adopted by traffic police to detect whether a driver is drunk or not. A breathalyzer can ascertain the amount of alcohol in the breath of a driver. Another factor to determine the presence of alcohol in the body of a driver is the blood alcohol concentration (BAC). A BAC level of more than 0.15 is considered unsafe for driving. There are other crude means adopted in certain jurisdictions such as making the suspected driver to walk in straight line or making them read out a passage.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is responsible for creating guidelines for safe driving. They have implemented rules under the National Minimum Drinking Age laws to wean drunken drivers off the road. According to their estimates, these laws have met with great success and have been able to prevent more than 20,000 drunken driving deaths in the past year.

Various organizations are dedicated to cause awareness about the problem of drunken driving. Particularly, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has met with a lot of popularity in this field. Media such as the television and newspapers are used extensively to educate people of the dangers of drunk driving. There are clips showing gruesome drunken driving deaths interspersed with movies and TV serials and true life accounts of victims.

The country has met with success in its fight against drunken driving. The number of fatalities is dwindling off with each passing year. There is a 33% decrease in the number of deaths this year from the past year. However, there is still a lot of work to be done and several organizations are working together to drive the bane of drunken driving into extinction.