Timmy Rice

Period
10-2-13
Mr. Kurek
Drunk driving is a problem in this area and needs to stop by raising awareness of the
extreme dangers of it. I feel the main problem in this area is the act of drinking and driving
because there are so many people that you see doing it, and it can cost people their lives. It is the
reason for a large amount of deaths in the United States each year because people are very
irresponsible, and they dont think about the consequences because their judgment is being
effected . Drunk driving needs to stop and I think I have a few solutions that may work to fix it.
There are many statistics out there that prove the severity of drinking and driving. One
person is killed every half-hour due to drunk driving and every other minute a person is seriously
injured in an alcohol related crash. Each year approximately 16,000 people are killed in alcohol
related crashes. For every 100,000 people in the United States, a little over 3 die due to an
accident involving drunk driving. Alcohol is a factor in almost half of all traffic fatalities.
During the year 2007, alcohol-impaired driving was involved in the deaths of nearly
13,000 Americans. On average, someone in the U.S. is killed by a drunk driver every 40 minutes.
Roughly three in every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related collision at some
point in their life. Over 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of
alcohol or narcotics in 2007. This number is less than 1% of the 159 million self-reported
episodes of drunk driving in that year. It takes approximately six hours after drinking for the
body to completely eliminate alcohol from its system with a BAC level of .08 g/dL. Because
alcohol dilutes itself in the water volume of the body in order to travel through it because vital
organs that contain a lot of water are particularly vulnerable to the effects of alcohol, because the
organs are too weak to be able to stand it.
Even at BAC levels as low as .02 g/dL alcohol can affect a persons response time and
driving ability. The probability of a crash increases significantly after .05 BAC, and even more
rapidly after .08 BAC. A driver with a BAC of .08 g/dL is 11 times more likely to be in a fatal
accident than a driver who has consumed no alcohol. In 2007, more than half of the drunk
drivers involved in fatal crashes had a BAC level of .15 g/dL, nearly twice the legal limit.
Drivers are far more likely to be alcohol impaired during the night than during the day. In 2007,
36% of drivers involved in nighttime fatal crashes were legally drunk versus just 9% during
daytime collisions.
Nearly 75% of drunk drivers involved in fatal collisions are not wearing their safety belts.

An alcohol-related collision is more than twice as likely to occur on the weekend as during the
week. Roughly 31% of drivers involved in fatal crashes on the weekend are legally drunk, as
opposed to just 15% during the week. According to one study, a first-time drunk-driving
offender has already driven drunk more than 80 times before being arrested.
State laws commonly use two different acronyms to describe drunken or impaired
drivingDWI and DUI. DWI stands for driving while intoxicated and typically refers only to
alcohol impairment, while DUI stands for driving under the influence and can refer to either
alcohol or drugs. Beer is the most common type of alcoholic beverage involved in both DUI
arrests and fatal crashes; according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration It is
also the drink of choice in most cases of binge drinking and underage drinking.
Men are about twice as likely as women to drive under the influence of alcohol and to be
involved in a fatal collision. In 2006, nearly 20% of all 16- to 20-year-old drivers killed in motor
vehicle collisions had a BAC level of .08 g/dL or higher. All 50 states and the District of
Columbia currently have zero tolerance laws, which make it illegal for anyone under the age of
21 to drive with a BAC of .02 g/dL or higher. Laws which set a specific blood alcohol
concentration level that is above the legal limit are called per se laws and were first
implemented in Norway in 1936. Per se is a Latin phrase that means by itself, and per se laws
state that a BAC level of .08 g/dL or above is the only evidence needed of impairment. The state
of Wyoming is the deadliest state for drinking and driving, with just over 13 drunk-driving
fatalities for every 100,000 people occurring each year. New York experiences the least amount
of drunk-driving fatalities, with only 2.06 per 100,000 residents.
The deadliest drunk-driving accident in the U.S. occurred in 1988 on interstate 71
in Kentucky when a drunk driver with a BAC level of.24g/dL caused a head on collision with a
school bus. The crash and ensuing fire killed 27 people and injured 34 others. To determine if a
driver is legally impaired, a police officer will typically administer a breathalyzer test. A
breathalyzer is a machine that estimates a drivers blood alcohol content level by determining the
amount of alcohol in his or her lungs.
Some solutions to the problem could be to have a policeman sit out of a bar with a
breathalyzer because people will attempt to drive drunk if not, and the policeman will be able to
monitor that. Another way to solve this problem could be to make sure bar owners dont let
anybody drive if they seem to be intoxicated. They should make a taxi service for intoxicated
people because a regular service may not be available at a certain time, and some people may
really need the service due to strange hours of the night.
There are a lot of problems in this area that have a very large effect on me and the
community. I feel the main problem in this area is the act of drinking and driving because
there are so many people that you see doing it. It is the reason for a large amount of
deaths in the United States each year because people are very irresponsible. Those were
my ideas and solutions on how to fix this extreme problem.