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Effect of drunk driving
The causes and effects of drunk driving
Effects of driving under the influence
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“Every single injury and death caused by drunk driving is totally preventable” says David J. Hanson, a drunken driving activist. Drinking and driving is a serious crime in all fifty states. The rules and laws may vary among the states. In Illinois, it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle with a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) or .08 percent or more. A driver also can be convicted of DUI with a BAC of more than .05 if additional evidence is present (DUI Laws par. 1). According to the Nation Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) alcohol-impaired motor vehicle crashes cost more than thirty-seven billion dollars annually and in 2010, more than ten thousand people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes - one every fifty-one minutes (NHTSA par. 3). Anyone and everyone is affected by drinking and driving. One poor decision can affect not only the driver, but the driver’s friends, family, and the people who share the road with the driver.
According to Jesse White, Illinois’ secretary of state, driving under the influence (DUI) is a serious offense with serious consequences. A DUI refers to driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, which includes any legal or illegal substance that causes impairment. Illinois classifies a DUI as a violent crime and a conviction is never expunged from a driver’s record (DUI Laws par. 11). The law enforcement can give three different types of chemical sobriety tests to test if a driver is intoxicated or not. A breath analysis is most commonly measured through the use of a portable breathalyzer. This test indirectly measures blood alcohol concentration by estimating the amount of alcohol on the driver’s breath. A formula is used to convert breath alcohol level to an approximate blo...
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...d emotionally of a DUI? Drinking and driving is a very serious offense in all fifty states and it will not be taken lightly. Everyone is affected by someone’s decision to drink and drive. Drinking and driving is such a big problem but it has such simple solutions: designate a driver, stay overnight, use public transportation, or call someone to pick you up. As Hanson said, “Every single injury and death caused by drunk driving is totally preventable”.
Works Cited
Hanson, David. J. “Driving.” Web log post. Drinking and Driving. Alcohol Problems and Solutions, 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
Hanson, David. J. “Drunk Driving Can Be Stopped.” Web lob post. Drinking and Driving. Alcohol Problems and Solutions, 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
Hanson, David J. “Young Drivers and Alcohol.” Web log post. Drinking and Driving. Alcohol Problems and Solutions, 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
The facts are plain and simple, that alcohol and driving do not mix. About three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol related crash at some time in their lives. Every single injury and death caused by drunk driving is totally preventable. To curb this national travesty, concerned Americans need to examine the problems, the effects, and the solutions to drunk driving. First of all, America has had a problem with drunk driving since Ford perfected the assembly line. Alcoholism is a problem in and of itself, but combined with driving can have a wide range of effects. The consequences of this reckless behavior can include a first time DUI or licenses suspension; a small fender bender, or worst of all a deadly crash. Most drivers that have only one or two drinks feel fine, and assume they are in control, which is irresponsible and dangerous. Alcohol is a depressant that slows down the body's ability to react and impairs judgment. To drive well, you need to be able to have a quick reaction time to avoid accidents. Unfortunately, people continue to drink and drive. However,...
What is the number one cause of teenage deaths in the United States? In this country a teenager dies due to alcohol related car accidents every twenty-two seconds.
Alcohol is causing too many deaths. Each year, excessive drinking is responsible for the deaths of 80,000 people in the United States, 4,700 of which are young Americans (6). Alcohol by itself is dangerous; this danger is (made greater) when individuals consuming it are allowed to drive a vehicle. Research has shown that a pedestrian struck by a vehicle moving at 40 miles an hour has a fifty percent chance of getting killed as a result of the impact (9). A distracted or impaired driver will not be able to react as fast as a non-impaired driver, meaning a drunk driver is a more dangerous driver than a sober one.
As you can see, drunk driving can cause many tragedies on a family or just the nation in general. Many people think that if we lower the Body Alcohol Content than there wouldn’t be as many people getting injured or killed a year. The question “Should tougher DUI laws be enacted?” is yet to be answered, but maybe in there next few years we will get an
“Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third. The speedway ends at the cemetery” (Rockne). Every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This amounts to one death every 48 minutes. The annual cost of alcohol related crashes totals more than 51 billion. In Recent discussions of drunk driving, a controversial issue has been whether the driving while intoxicated laws should be increased due to the amount tax payers are paying for drunk driving crashes. On the one hand. Some argue that the driving laws for driving drunk should remain the same and not change. From this perspective the laws about driving under the influence should greatly increase to be stricter, this will help decrease the death rate per year in the United States. On the other hand, however others argue that the laws about driving while drunk are already too strict and should remain unchanged. In sum, then, the issue is whether the laws about driving drunk should be greatly increased to be more effective, or remain unchanged. Because drunk driving can result in unnecessary and premature deaths, unsafe roadways, billions of dollars spent on taxpayers due to DUI’S, and losing a loved one. Drunk driving laws should be altered to be more efficient.
Drunk driving has been an increasing problem for many years. One issue that contributes to this is that in the United States it is actually legal to drive with a certain alcohol percentage. The blood alcohol limit is 0.8 percent (Drunk Driving). This means that a person may drive legally as long as they have a blood alcohol percentage of 0.8 percent or under. However, even at a percentage of 0.3 there may be some impairment of alertness and concentration (Drunk Driving). Driving requires fast reflexes that may be impaired at a 0.5 percent blood alcohol level but a person with this level of intoxication is not legally drinking and driving. Many people are arrested for drunk driving. In 2009, more than 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving while under the influence (Drunk Driving). In addition, “an average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before their first arrest” (Get Involved). Therefore, there were a minimum of 112 million accounts of drunk driving in 2009 alone. Drunk drivers also cause an increasing number of deaths. Drunk drivers in the United States c...
Driving while drunk is one of the very dangerous things in the life of a driver. Drivers who work under high Blood Alcohol Concentration also known as (BAC) usually expressed as a percentage of ethanol in the blood consisting of alcohol per volume of blood or alternatively mass of alcohol per mass of blood. These drivers are at a great increase of car risk accidents, vehicular deaths as well as highway risks. Drinking under the Influence commonly known as DUI simply refers to driving a motor vehicle while one has level of alcohol in their blood exceeding the legal limit. This is not limited to alcoholic content but covers other drugs that include but are not limited to prescription drugs. This leads the driver to lack coordination, experience double vision, brief blackouts and have a slurred speech. Driving under the influence causes brain impairment leading to a person feeling that they can manage a situation just like they have always handled it before. This is always as a result of poor reasoning and judgment which leaves one vulnerable to the deadly effects of drunk driving.
Drunk driving is a completely needless crime due to it not being obligatory and completely recreational. According to the DMV, every 53 minutes, someone is killed by a drunk driver and every 90 seconds, someone is injured. That totals to about 350k people affected physically by someone driving under influence. That also doesn’t include the families affected by the fatalities or injuries. Almost one out of every three traffic deaths involves drunk driving and one in three people will be involved in a drunken driving crash in their lifetime. Some may believe that driving “tipsy” is not as ba...
Law enforcements around the US have worked extremely hard to prevent drinking and driving. Checkpoints were established to help prevent DUIs. In Sedalia, for example, mostly they are on “big nights” such as prom, Fourth of July, and graduation. A DUI checkpoint is when police officers block the road with barriers or vehicles. Before being a loud to go through the checkpoint, the driver must have a conversation with the officer and present his or her driver’s license. If the driver is shown to have signs of drinking alcohol, the officer can give the driver a sobriety test or a Breathalyzer.
It is a tragic truth: About 10,000 lives are lost in the United States because of drunk driving each year. Alcohol is wildly known as one of the main reasons of causing social security issue. Small amount can make people feel relaxed, but bigger amount could make them loss their coordination, get feeling of confusion and disorientation, and significantly slowed their reaction time. On average, one person dies every hour because of alcoholic traffic accident in United State. Therefore, the NTSB put out a recommendation last May that the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) level for drivers should be lowered from the current level of .08% to .05%. But for several reasons, we shouldn’t lower the criterion on blood alcohol content.
Drunk driving is when an individual drives a vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level over the legaly permited limit. Driving under the influence of alcohol is a major health problem in the United States as it accounts for a high number of road fatalities; hence, there is a need for stricter drunk driving rules in the United States in order to reduce drunken driving fatalities.
Driving under the influence is one of the most common and dangerous situations in which anyone can be or be placed. Drinking and driving is a serious offence that can cause someone to be physically harm or even killed. Not only are you putting yourself at risk but you are also risking the lives of passengers in the car as well as any other car and occupants sharing the road with you. Many people believe that increasing fines for drunk driving offenders will play a compelling role in cutting down the occurrences of driving under the influence. However, while harsher DUI laws will look effective on paper, they will not make a significant step in the fight against drunk driving. Although there is a law enforced for drinking and driving in the
The growing awareness of alcohol hazards has made people more cautious of their drinking habits, particularly young adults. At present young adults have the highest prevalence of alcohol consumption than any other age group. They also drink more heavily, experience more negative consequences, and engage in more harmful activities, specifically drunk driving. Although surveys have documented a decline in recent years, consumption rates remain highest from late teen years to the late twenties (Johnston1-3). Despite the long-term decline since 1982 in alcohol related traffic deaths, a 4 percent increase occurred between 1994 and 1995 among young adults age 21 and over (Hingson 4). As alcohol-impaired driving persists, legal and community initiatives intervene to help reduce the problem, as well as, continuing research on possible solutions.
Drunken driving, is defined as, operating a motor vehicle with blood alcohol content is above the legal limit set by statute, which supposedly is the level at which a person cannot drive safely(The Free Dictionary, 2014). Drunken driving is broken down into different branches based for the drunken driving terminology; these include, DUI (Driving Under the Influence and OUI (Operating Under the Influence) (The Free Dictionary, 2014). A DUI is defined as the crime of driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol (The Free Dictionary 2014). The term DUI, dates back to 1969 when it was first used to describe the criminal act (The Free Dictionary, 2014). The term OUI, is defined as operating any vehicle in any way under the influence of alcohol, even if they are just sitting in the back
Many people in the United States enjoy a drink of their favorite alcoholic beverage. It could be a nice ice cold beer after a hard day of work or going to the bar and enjoying a few shots or mixed drinks with friends. Drinking alcohol is a common way to mingle with friends and take the edge off a difficult day. However, there are dangers involved with alcohol since it does dampen the body’s ability to cope with new information. Alcohol becomes a poison to the body when consumed in large quantities. The biggest danger is not to the driver after they become inebriated, but comes to anyone the drunk driver comes in contact with. A sober person can be dangerous just by being distracted, but a drunk driver’s ability to cope with changing situations and distractions is one of the biggest hazards on today’s roads. Some individuals believe that they are not as impaired as what they are led to believe from government ads and the many videos that show what can happen to someone who is drinking and driving. Although, there are many policies in place to advocate against drunk driving, there are those who would endanger themselves and others with their thoughtless actions when they jump into the driver’s seat of a vehicle. Drinking and driving should never be combined because a person who has been drinking does not have the ability to use all mental faculties unimpaired, many people have been killed, injured, or psychologically hurt by a drunk driver, many men and women do not know the difference weight and gender have on the body’s ability to process alcohol, and the financial and legal trouble that is awaiting for those convicted by a DUI.