Impaired Driving – Drive Right 365

DUI Prevention – What Can You Do?

Be Responsible:
- Plan for a safe ride before the first drink or use of drugs.
- Designate a sober driver – someone who will not be drinking or using drugs during the event.
- Use a cab/public transportation.
- Stay where you are until you are sober or someone who is sober picks you up.
Offer to be a designated driver or be available to pick up a loved one anytime, anywhere.
Hide keys – don’t be afraid to take someone’s keys to prevent them from leaving before they are sober.
Report impaired driving – call 911 when witnessing impaired driving behavior. Be prepared to provide location, license plate number and observed dangerous behavior.
Choose to be sober.

Answer: Driving under the influence of alcohol and/or legal and illegal drugs.

Examples: A couple of beers, prescription pain medication, marijuana, methamphetamine or a combination of the above listed items.

Effective measures include:

Actively enforcing existing 0.08% BAC laws, minimum legal drinking age laws, and zero tolerance laws for drivers younger than 21 years old in all states.
Requiring ignition interlocks for all offenders, including first-time offenders.
Using sobriety checkpoints.
Putting health promotion efforts into practice that influence economic, organizational, policy, and school/community action.
Using community-based approaches to alcohol control and DWI prevention.
Requiring mandatory substance abuse assessment and treatment, if needed, for DWI offenders.
Raising the unit price of alcohol by increasing taxes.

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.
Among drivers with BAC levels of 0.08% or higher involved in fatal crashes in 2016, nearly three in 10 were between 25 and 34 years of age (27%). The next two largest groups were ages 21 to 24 (26%) and 35 to 44 (22%).

Motorcyclists:

Among motorcyclists killed in fatal crashes in 2016, 25% had BACs of 0.08% or greater.
Motorcyclists ages 35-39 have the highest percentage of deaths with BACs of 0.08% or greater (38% in 2016).

Drivers with prior driving while impaired (DWI) convictions:

Drivers with a BAC of 0.08% or higher involved in fatal crashes were 4.5 times more likely to have a prior conviction for DWI than were drivers with no alcohol in their system. (9% and 2%, respectively).

In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.
Of the 1,233 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2016, 214 (17%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver.
In 2016, more than 1 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. That’s one percent of the 111 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among U.S. adults each year (figure below).
Drugs other than alcohol (legal and illegal) are involved in about 16% of motor vehicle crashes.⁴
Marijuana use is increasing and 13% of nighttime, weekend drivers have marijuana in their system.
Marijuana users were about 25% more likely to be involved in a crash than drivers with no evidence of marijuana use, however other factors–such as age and gender–may account for the increased crash risk among marijuana users.