Drunk driving is a large problem in our society for a number of reasons. In today’s day and age, driving under the influence is normalized. How many times have we been to a family gathering where adults are drinking and at the end of the night everyone drives their respective families home. Or when at a high school party we saw one of our friends drive home even though we knew they were drinking. Sadly, even though there are attempts to put a stop to drunk driving many people still do and this leads to large amounts of fatal accidents in our motorways.
In 2021 there were a total of 13,384 drunk-driving related traffic deaths. When compared to the total driving fatalities of 2021 of 42,939 we can see that drunk driving deaths made up a very big part of that total. This further proves my point that even though there is a large stigma against drunk driving the majority of people ignore that and continue to drive anyways.
This is all to say that there seems to be a large part of the population that doesn’t understand how dangerous any type of drunk driving is and puts innocent people in danger for the sake of their own convenience. Because of this there are groups of people looking and advocating for new solutions that help fix the problem in a more efficient way.
According to the CDC there are a couple of new strategies that could help to reduce drunk driving and in turn lessen the negative effects of it. Lowering the BAC limit from 0.8 to 0.5 or 0.65 would greatly help to reduce the amount of drunk drivers on the road. I feel like the main reason there is such a large amount of drunk drivers on our roads is that because the limit is 0.8 drivers think they can proceed to get drunk and drive around without consequences. reducing the limit to around 0.6 would help to reduce the amount of inebriated drivers on the road. To prove that this strategy would indeed reduce the amount of accidents on the road, Utah implemented this into their state law and saw a reduction of around 18% in the crash death rate per mile. The fact that this worked in a state like Utah where drinking is a very small part of their culture goes to show the impact a change like this could make in states like Florida and North Carolina which have the highest drunk driving fatality rates in the U.S.
The reason that this issue matters to me is that I know people that have been in drunk driving accidents which thankfully didn’t end fatally but had circumstances been different it could be a totally different story. However I also know of people whose lives have been adversely affected by drunk drivers.
I was not aware that the drinking BAC limit was so high for drunk drivers, I thought it was already around 0.5 so this is actually very concerning. I am thankful enough to never have experienced anyone I know drive drunk or be impacted by another drunken driver but have heard many stories about horrible accidents caused from it. The limit should be lowered and I’m surprised that it is not since it would only better our society and aren’t really any drawbacks.
Drunk driving is a serious problem. I remember so many of my friends in high school would either drunk drive or get into cars knowing the driver wasn’t sober. It always and still does make me so mad. I always yell at people who do that. My aunt died because of a drunk driver when she was only 18. I always tell people that story because some people seriously underestimate how much of an issue it is.
A drunk driving accident recently resulted in tragedy in my hometown, and it angers me to hear the way some kids from my high school still think it’s okay to drive under the influence. My high school does a program called “Every 15 Minutes” where they stage a drunk driving accident in front of the school in order to show the severity of the situation, but more absolutely needs to be done to prevent such tragedies.