Straight Talk Law: Seattle, Washington Personal Injury Lawyer Jason Epstein On Drinking And Driving – Still A Serious Problem

Item: In Bradford, Vermont, the state police pulled over a man and charged him with drunk driving. They stopped him on Route 5 – driving a golf cart.

Item: In Essex, England, police also stopped and charged a man with DUI – who ended up losing his license for a year. He was driving a small electric Barbie toy car, which has a top speed of 4 mph.

These two recent news stories are easy to laugh at – grown men, intoxicated and attempting to pilot obviously silly vehicles on public highways. But drunk driving continues to be a very serious problem all over the world, despite the fact that wrongful death and personal injury car accidents resulting from DUI have declined remarkably in the past few decades.

Yes, the good news is that alcohol-related fatalities have declined from 1.64 deaths per 100 million miles driven in 1982 to .043 in 2007. But the continuing bad news is:

• A motorist arrested for DUI has likely gotten away with driving drunk an average of 87 times
• The legal definition of driving under the influence is misleading. In 2007, 2600 wrongful deaths occurred from drivers who were impaired by alcohol consumption, but still below the legal blood alcohol limit.
• A personal injury is inflicted due to a drunk driver’s inebriation on average every minute. A wrongful death occurs every 45 minutes.
• About 3 out of every 10 of us will be involved in an alcohol-related car accident at some point in our lives.
• 63 % of the costs attributed to DUI drivers are carried by others besides the actual drunk driver

Although I am currently very involved in stopping the incredibly unsafe practice of texting and driving (I’ve set up a special website at http://teensagainstdistracteddriving.com where teens can take the pledge to stop this behavior), I do want motorists to continue to be aware of the fact that, although we have made progress, drunk driving is still one of our major – and avoidable – dangers on the roadways of America.

As a personal injury lawyer practicing in the Seattle, Washington area, I see its tragic consequences firsthand every single day. We should all continue to be vigilant about stopping others from getting behind the wheel after drinking – as well as ourselves.

Item: In Hampton, New Hampshire, a woman was arrested for drunk driving following a car accident that critically injured one of her passengers. Her baby son was also riding in the vehicle.

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