Driving While Intoxicated Statistics
How Dangerous is Driving While Intoxicated? Author: Drugteststrips.com Intoxicating driving can be defined as driving when a drug "renders the driver incapable of driving safely" or "causes the driver to be impaireda. The effects of specific drug abuse differ depending on their mechanisms ...
How Dangerous is Driving While Intoxicated?
Author: Drugteststrips.com
Intoxicating driving can be defined as driving when a drug "renders the driver incapable of driving safely" or "causes the driver to be impaireda. The effects of specific drug abuse differ depending on their mechanisms of action, the amount consumed, the history of the user, and other factors.
Why Intoxicated Driving is dangerous?
The primary concern regarding intoxicated driving is that driving under the influence of any drug that acts on the brain could impair one's judgment, reaction time, and motor skills. Intoxicated driving is a public health concern because it puts not only the driver at risk, but also passengers and others who share the road.
How dangerous is driving while intoxicated?
A number of studies have examined illicit drug use in drivers involved in motor fatal accidents, reckless driving, or vehicle crashes. For example,
a¢ According to NHTSA 2006 report, during 2005, 16,885 people in the U.S. died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, representing 39% of all traffic-related deaths.
a¢ For every 31 minutes someone is killed with alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes and nonfatally hurts someone every 2 minutes.
a¢ According to National Hardcore Drunk Driver Project 58% of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in 2006 involved drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of .15 or above.
a¢ Studies conducted in several localities have found that approximately 4 to 14 percent of drivers who sustained injury or died in traffic accidents tested positive for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana.
a¢ One study found that about 34% of motor vehicle crash victims admitted to a Maryland trauma center tested positive for adrugs onlya. About 16% tested positive for aalcohol onlya.
a¢ According to 2006 NHTSA data, more than half of the 414 child passengers ages 14 and younger who died in alcohol-related crashes during 2005 were riding with the drinking driver.
Intoxicated Driving must be closely monitored and strictly punished. People should voluntarily take the responsibility of safe driving. Every single injury and death caused by drunk driving is completely preventable. Drunk driving, like most other social problems, resists simple solutions. Unfortunately, in spite of great progress, alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious national problem that tragically effects many victims annually.
Statistics show texting while driving is equivalent to driving while intoxicated. Why isn’t penalty similar?
Research has shown that texting while driving is as bad or even worse than driving while intoxicated. My question is why many cities and states haven’t enacted laws to even ban texting? And why aren’t penalties and fines equivalent? It seems that if you are as prone to an accident and killing an innocent person, why not be held in the same regard legally?
Yes its worse and its rated higher than drunk driving and the laws/penalties should be the same plus “what u talkin’ bout” has no idea what she is taking about, if you are caught texting then you should be put through the system as a drunk driver would..
Does Alcoholism runs rampant in the Mexican Latino community.”?
The Mexican mother of a four-year-old mangled by a drunk driver explained the problem. “In Mexico,” she said, “the culture is very much a drinking cultureDrinking culture is the notable customs shared by groups of people around the world involved in drinking alcoholic beverages.
Although the type of alcohol, social attitude toward (and acceptance of) drinking varies around the world, nearly every civilization has
“Hispanic drivers are more likely than Anglo drivers to consume more alcohol more frequently and have been shown to be more likely than Anglos to drive with a blood alcohol concentrationblood alcohol concentration
The concentration of alcohol in the blood, expressed as the weight of alcohol in a fixed volume of blood and used as a measure of the degree of intoxication in an individual.
blood alcohol concentration ) level over .05 percent. Hispanics also believed that it takes six to eight drinks to affect driving, while Anglos thought two to four drinks affected driving.”
In 2003, the Austin-American Statesman published an article titled “Hispanics and DUI: A Troubling Trend,” revealing similar statistics to those published in the Stockton Record. “One thing I have noticed,” a cop told the paper, “is that the Hispanics I arrest for DWI An abbreviation for driving while intoxicated, which is an offense committed by an individual who operates a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or Drugs and Narcotics. , 90 percent of the time, are more drunk than the white and black people I arrest.” The paper also quoted a professor at the University of Texas who studied Hispanics and drinking. “The profile of a drunk driver in California,” Raul Caetano told the paper, “is a young Hispanic male, and I bet you have a similar situation all over the Southwest.” And “the traditional pattern of drinking in Mexico is one of infrequent drinking of high amounts.”
The Record of Stockton affirmed that truth. “The Latino community creates its own problems,” Joe Ynostroza, an expert on Hispanics and alcoholism, told the paper. “The problem is especially acute in Mexico,” the paper averred. “Most of this is first- or second-generation Mexican males,” Ynostroza said. “Alcoholism runs rampant in the Mexican Latino community.”
In the words of one Hispanic cop: “It’s a cultural thing.”
Are current marijuana laws sensible?
Sources from http://www.drugwarfacts.org/marijuan.htm will be cited by the number corresponding to where it was found.
Understand that I believe that possession and the private use of marijuana should always be legal. Driving while intoxicated should not (and already is illegal). Smoking in public should be a local issue, as it is the preference of the people living there that should decide whether marijuana can be used publicly. Trafficking of drugs is the only thing that should be federally regulated, as it is an international issue and directly falls under their jurisdiction. Also understand that whether or not you use (or would use) marijauna is your choice, having marijuana legalized only means you can legally make the choice for yourself. At all times you can decide not to use it, but those millions of americans who do are facing excessive criminal penalties for behavior that affects only them, NOT YOU. You have the constitutional right to not use marijuana, but I believe that it should also be your right to choose for yourself.
The long half-life of THC prevents “crashing” after using the drug and greatly reduces the chance of dependency. Little to no withdraw symptoms were found with average marijuana use.
* paraphrased from the IOM report “Marijuana and Medicine”
There is no scientific evidence that marijuana use leads to ‘harder’ drugs.
* need citation
Addiction rates:
Nicotine – 35% * almost twice as addictive as cocaine and kills 25 times more people per year (if all 17000 deaths from all illicit substances were contributed to cocaine).
Cocaine – 19%
Marijuana – 9%
Death rates:
Tobacco – 435,000 /yr
Alcohol – 85,000 /yr
All illicit drugs – 17,000/yr
Marijuana – 0 (can not overdose)
* center for disease control
** Alcohol related deaths kill 5 times more people per year than ALL illicit drugs
Effects:
*Tobacco
Very mild calming feeling, Yellow teeth/nails/skin, emphysema, lung cancer, etc.
*Marijuana
Obvious acute effects, bronchitis (long term) — notice I did NOT list cancer.
** A california study observing heavy marijuana users over the course of 8 years found that marijuana smokers were no more prone to cancer than non-smokers.
“Since 1969, government-appointed commissions in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and the Netherlands concluded, after reviewing the scientific evidence, that marijuana’s dangers had previously been greatly exaggerated, and urged lawmakers to drastically reduce or eliminate penalties for marijuana possession.”
*#32
“…It criminalizes large numbers of otherwise law-abiding, mainly young, people to the detriment of their futures. It has become a proxy for the control of public order; and it inhibits accurate education about the relative risks of different drugs including the risks of cannabis itself.”
* #37
“Statements in the popular media that the potency of cannabis has increased by ten times or more in recent decades are not support by the data from either the USA or Europe.”
* #39
The U.S. federal government spent over $19 billion dollars in 2003 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $600 per second. The budget has since been increased by over a billion dollars.
* Office of National Drug Control Policy
** Don’t you think this could go to more important expenditures?
Just this year 540,658 arrests have been made for cannibis. FBI statistics reported 829,625 arrests in 2006 for cannibis, the highest ever in one year, and of those arrests 738,915 (89%) were for possession alone. An American is now arrested for violating cannabis laws every 38 seconds.
*Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation
You don’t understand the logic (but then again neither do I)! If 1 American drives drunk then EVERY illegal alien can drive drunk and kill as many people as they want!
Same goes for all crimes!
BUT if you do something AGAINST an illegal alien THEN your a no good racist pig f#$%er!!
I thing it must be some mental disease that infects morons and politicians!
Why do supporters say illegal aliens driving drunk is really not a problem when?
Cultural Impact, from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD):?????¦when you combine the Hispanic drinking culture with the lack of education on drunk driving prevention, you end up with tragic consequences.” The article goes on, ???According to research compiled by Dr. Catherine Clark of the Alcohol Policy Group in Berkeley, Calif., Hispanic drivers are more likely than Anglo drivers to consume more alcohol more frequently and have been shown to be more likely than Anglos to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level over .05 percent.??? MADD??™s data indicate that 42% of all traffic fatalities involved alcohol, the percentage is increasing, and Hispanics as a group are involved at a much higher rate than their portion of the population.
As noted in a 2003 article in the Austin American Statesmen, A troubling trend: Hispanics and DWI – Latinos account for nearly half of 2002 Austin arrests:
???Of 3,007 drunken driving arrests in 2002, 43 percent involved Hispanic men, even though they make up only about 11 percent of Austin’s driving population.
Including women, Hispanics made up 47 percent of the DWI arrests but only 21 percent of Austin drivers.
??¦Statewide, 42 percent of the people arrested in 2002 for driving while intoxicated were Latino, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
In Austin, 46 percent of the people arrested for drunk driving from 1999 to 2002 were Latino, according to the Austin Police Department.???
The impact of illegal Hispanic aliens on the law-abiding Hispanic portion of the DWI statistics is mostly unknown but it is probably sizable and giving the Hispanic community a bad reputation.
http://apostille.us/news/illegal_aliens_are_nations_most_lethal_drivers.shtml
Good hooking first sentence, grabs my attention. Great topic thesis statement at the end of first para. But make sure you have that at the beginning of the last para, but revised a little bit. Otherwise good content and points, I liked it a lot.
I see Mexicans standing outside their homes with about 10 cars,they are drinking and playing Mexican music after about 4 or 5 hours I can see 5 or 6 take off and leave. I copy down the license plate and contact police. It is culture.
Proofread my 3 paragraph essay?
Please proofread and make corrections that you think would stregnthen my essay on drunk driving.
Thousands of people lose their lives needlessly each year to preventable motor vehicle accidents. Accidents caused by drunk driving could be easily prevented. When a person drinks they should not under any circumstances drive. Driving under the influence of alcohol causes severe injuries and death, citizens must challenge the law makers to strengthen the penalties for the offenders and realize safer roadways for all motorists.
Making the penalties for drinking and driving harsher would impact the number of drunk drivers in a positive way, helping prevent needless pain and suffering. The current laws on drinking anad driving are not as effective as they could be. If a person is caught drinking and driving they should have their license immediately taken for a month, this offers them a time period for the offenders to learn from their mistakes. If the person becomes a repeat offender they should have their license taken for a minimum of a year and their vehicle sold, all the proceeds going to charity. If the offender kills another while driving he should automatically be put in jail for 10 years, nothing gives a person the right to kill another even in a vehicle collision. A collision with alcohol involved should be dealt with strictly and the one at fault should be disciplined severely with many, many years in jail.
Statistics show that alcohol has a severe affect oh human reflexes. After consuming a fair amount of alcohol humans tend to lose their ability to navigate through their surrounding properly. If enough alcohol is consumed to make a person legally drunk, their coordination and reflexes become greatly impaired. If a person has trouble walking after drinking, why do they think they can drive after drinking? The kind of people with this mindset should be permanently removed from the roads.
When people drink and drive, they are not only endangering their own life, but they are also putting other drivers on the road at risk. If any alcohol shows up on a breathalyzer the intoxicated driver should be penalized. There should be no legal amount of alcohol in a person’s system when they are driving. Alcohol is a harmful and dangerous substance. The effects of alcohol have been closely compared to illegal drugs like marijuana. The effect each substance gives you is very similar in comparison according so scientific tests.
Stricter laws must be enforced quickly to provide safer roads for all motorists. Many changes should be made to the current laws on drunk driving. Far too many innocent people lose their lives and loved ones to irresponsible drunk drivers. Is it really fair for another to kill someone under the influence and get off the hook as if it was a small offense? Taking another’s life while driving under the influence is the same as murder, and it should be treated as such.
Nope.
The laws are way too lenient.
We should bar anybody with any kind of a drug conviction from any job where judgment is required.