Drinking While Driving Facts

Drinking while driving whether you want to admit it or not affects every person on a daily basis. It could be you doing the drinking and driving, or it could be someone out on the roads that is drunk driving and they could cause a deadly accident. While drinking and driving fatalities have gone down over the past few years, that does not mean that drinking while driving is still not a huge issue in our society. We take a look at that issue and give you some pretty astounding numbers, as we take a look at drinking while driving facts that might surprise you.

Drinking and driving is an issue no one should take lightly and these drunk driving facts show us why:

  • 28 people die every day from DUI’s an average of one death every 52 minutes.
  • 2019 had 10,142 DUI related fatalities. Accounting for 28% of all motor vehicle fatalities.
  • It is illegal to drive in any of the 50 states with a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of 0.08 or higher. However, in 2014, 1,764 people were killed from alcohol-related crashes with a BAC under 0.08.
  • If .05 was the legal limit, fatalities could reduce by 11 percent.
  •  A BAC of.05-.079 increases the risk of crashing 7 times.
  • One person is killed every 50 minutes in the United States due to drinking while driving accidents.
  • Every two minutes, someone is injured in a drunk driving accident.
  • About one-third of all traffic crash deaths in the United States involve drunk drivers (drivers with a BAC of 0.08 or higher).
  • Drinking while driving is still the #1 cause of death on our roadways.
  • Of the drivers arrested or convicted of drinking while driving, one-third of them are repeat offenders.
  • On average, drinking and driving costs an American $800 per year.
  • On average, a drunk driver will drive 80 times under the influence before getting caught.

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Teen Drinking While Driving Facts

  • Each year, there are 4,300 teens killed because of teen alcohol use. This is more than all other drugs combined.
  • For kids that start drinking before the age of 15, they are six times more likely to develop an alcohol dependence or abuse later in life.
  • For teenagers, car crashes are the #1 leading cause of death.
  • Of those car crashes, 1 in 4 involved an underage drunk driver.
  • Underage drinkers are also more reckless and less likely to wear seatbelts — 74 percent of the young DUI drivers involved in fatal accidents were unrestrained at the point of impact.

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Source: NHTSA, MADD and Bill Coats Law

For more valuable information about drunk driving, take a look at the following infographic prepared by our friends at carsurance.net