DWI Newsroom

Alcohol-Related Motor Vehicle Crashes Kill Someone Every 31 Minutes And Nonfatally Injure Someone Every Two Minutes

During 2003, 17,013 people in the U.S. died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, representing 40% of all traffic-related deaths (NHTSA 2004a).
 
In 2002, about 1.5 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics (NHTSA 2004a). That’s slightly more than one percent of the 120 million self-reported episodes of alcohol–impaired driving among U.S. adults each year (Dellinger 1999).
 
Drugs other than alcohol (e.g., marijuana and cocaine) are involved in about 18% of motor vehicle driver deaths. These other drugs are generally used in combination with alcohol (NHTSA 2003).
  
More than two-thirds of child passengers ages 14 and younger who died in alcohol-related crashes during 1997–2002 were riding with the drinking driver; only 32% of them were properly restrained at the time of the crash (Shults 2004).
 
Each year, alcohol-related crashes in the United States cost about $51 billion (Blincoe 2002). 

Groups at Risk

Male drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes are almost twice as likely as female drivers to be intoxicated with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or greater (NHTSA 2004b). A BAC of 0.08% is equal to or greater than the legal limit in most states.
 
At all levels of blood alcohol concentration, the risk of being involved in a crash is greater for young people than for older people (Zador 2000). In 2003, 25% of drivers ages 15 to 20 who died in motor vehicle crashes had been drinking alcohol (NHTSA 2004c). 
 
Young men ages 18 to 20 (under the legal drinking age) reported driving while impaired almost as frequently as men ages 21 to 34 (Liu 1997). 

Among motorcycle drivers killed in fatal crashes, 30% have BACs of 0.08% or greater (Paulozzi 2004).
Nearly half of the alcohol-impaired motorcyclists killed each year are age 40 or older, and motorcyclists ages 40 to 44 years have the highest percentage of fatalities with BACs of 0.08% or greater (Paulozzi 2004).

Of the 2,136 traffic fatalities among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2003, 21% involved alcohol (NHTSA 2004d).  
Risk Factors

Nearly three quarters of those convicted of driving while impaired are either frequent heavy drinkers (alcohol abusers) or alcoholics (alcohol dependent) (Miller 1986).

Among drivers involved in fatal crashes, those with BAC levels of 0.08% or higher were nine times more likely to have a prior conviction for driving while impaired (DWI) than were drivers who had not consumed alcohol (NHTSA 2004a).