Drunk Driving Fatalities on the Rise

 

 After years of relative decline, the number of alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents has begun rising again.

 

March 17th, known internationally as Saint Patrick’s Day or the Feast of Saint Patrick, is for many people in the US an enjoyable way to celebrate Irish and Irish American tradition and culture. Sadly, it is also one of the days of the year when the number of accidents related to driving under the influence of alcohol rises sharply. According to the data provided by the United States Department of Transportation, in the years 2011-2015, 252 people died in car crashes during the St. Patrick’s Holiday. Annually, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reminds those who will attend St. Patrick’s Day celebrations to designate a sober driver or have another form of transportation back home once the partying is finished. Still, many people decide to get behind the wheel after drinking and jeopardize their own safety as well as that of other users of the road. Sometimes it ends in a tragedy, like the one that played out on Interstate 95 in the early hours of Saturday, March 18th of this year.

That day, around 1 a.m., Michael Spinale, a 41-year-old resident of Roslindale, Boston, MA, crashed into the back of a taxi with the speed of possibly more than 100 mph, killing its passenger and injuring the driver. According to court documents, asked by the police if he had been drinking earlier that night, Spinale allegedly responded “Of course I did, it’s St. Patrick’s Day” and admitted to the consumption of “5 or 6 beers”. As the aforementioned documents show, Spinale did not pass field sobriety tests which prompted the police to administer a preliminary breath test that purportedly showed the BAC of 0.13. Spinale was charged with motor vehicle homicide, drunken driving, speeding and traffic violations. After the arraignment that took place on Monday, March 20th, the defendant was released on $10,000 bail; however, he was ordered by the court not to drive or drink alcohol while the case is pending. During that time, he will also be subjected to alcohol consumption tests three times a day. The next hearing has been scheduled on April 21st.

 

Bleak Statistics

Tragic incidents like the one mentioned above are hardly confined to only one day of the year. Across the US, alcohol-impaired crashes, that is to say, accidents where the responsible driver was found to have a BAC of 0.08 g/dL or higher, cause around 10,000 deaths each year. In 2015, the number of such deaths rose significantly to 10,265, which marks a 3.2% increase in comparison with the previous year. This appears to be the largest spike in the number of alcohol-related fatalities in 10 years which raises questions about the effectiveness of the current measures being taken to prevent drink-and-drive accidents, and also about the reasons why a considerable number of people decide to take their chances and get behind the wheel after consuming alcohol.

 

DUI Laws – Effective Enough?

Regarding legal measures that are intended to curb alcohol-impaired accidents, it is notable that even the states where the rates of such incidents are currently the highest in the country, such as Rhode Island and Connecticut (where drunk driving deaths make up respectively 43% and 39% of total traffic fatalities), already have quite stringent DUI laws. For example, in both of those states, ignition interlock (which is a device that a driver needs to blow into before a vehicle can be started – if alcohol is detected in the exhaled air, the car will not turn on) is mandatory for all convictions. Also, in both states, drivers under the age of 21 can be charged with DUI for BAC higher than 0.02 – instead of the regular 0.08. Some might argue that additional preemptive measures are still needed in order to effectively bring down the number of alcohol-impaired fatalities nationwide.

 

What Can Be Done

Indeed, the National Transportation Safety Board has already suggested some ways to reduce DUI deaths. The first of those would be to lower the legal BAC level to 0.05 g/dL. This is the level permitted by law in most European countries based on studies proving its higher effectiveness. Still, within the US, only Utah is planning to start penalizing drivers with the BAC of 0.05 instead of 0.08. The NTSB also recommends stronger enforcement of DUI laws – for example, by means of checkpoints and saturation patrols.

Some states, such as Iowa, are considering the introduction of 24/7 sobriety programs that propose a two-times-a-day, mandatory breath tests for people who already have been convicted of alcohol-related offenses, such as driving under influence. Failing the test would entail consequences with immediate effect – including a jail sentence. Such a program has already been adopted by Omaha in 2014 as a pilot and has been continually in place in most counties of South Dakota since 2005. In that state, the program has purportedly resulted in a drop of alcohol-impaired deaths by 33 percent in just one year.

 

Social Factors – Risk-Taking and Craft Beers

Still, the question why a considerable number of people decide to take risks and drive a car after drinking remains an open one. It seems that one factor may be that now fewer people consider drinking and driving to be risky behavior. For example, in a survey conducted in 2009 by the American Automobile Association, 9 out of 10 drivers asked stated that driving under the influence was a threat to other users of the road. However, in a more recent study, the number of drivers who thought this way was less than 7 out of 10. Another possible explanation for the increase in alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents might be connected to the growing popularity of craft beers. In 2014, craft beer sales grew by 22% in comparison to the previous year. How is this fact relevant to the problem? Craft beers tend to have much higher alcohol by volume content than regular beers meaning a person may reach dangerous or even illegal BAC levels from drinking less than they normally would, and fail to realize how impaired they had become until it was too late.

Although alcohol-impaired crashes used to be a much more prevalent problem in the past, the issue does not cease to be worrisome and the current growing trend does not inspire optimism. Continued measures, both on the legal and the social levels, will need to be taken in order for the problem to become marginal and tragedies such as the March 18th accident to occur less frequently.

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