Personal Injury Blog

Any Degree of Drunk Driving Increases Risk of Accidents

August 18th, 2011
Driving under the influence.

Buzzed driving is considered drunk driving.

A person’s blood alcohol level does not necessarily have to be .08% or above for him to be at an increased risk of accidents. Any Degree of Drunk Driving Increases Risk of Accidents.  That information comes from a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California San Diego.

The researchers analyzed data from the federal administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.  They analyzed fatal accident records between 1994 and 2008, or close to 1.5 million car accidents.  While all accidents that are included in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System can be considered serious accidents, the researchers analyzed the data by comparing the ratio of severe injuries to minor injuries. According to researchers, accidents seem to be much more severe when a person is driving under the influence of any amount of alcohol.  Specifically, the injuries seemed to be about 36.6% more severe when the motorist had even minute traces of alcohol in his blood.

A person driving with a blood-alcohol level of even .01%, had a much higher risk of being involved in an accident causing serious injuries.  For instance, according to the study, there were 4.33 serious injuries for every non-serious injury in an accident involving a BAC level of .01%.  In contrast, for sober drivers, there were 3.17 serious injuries for every non-serious injury in an accident. Simply put, the data seems to suggest that persons, who are driving even with a .01% BAC level in their system, are at risk of being involved in accidents that cause injuries that are much more severe than those accidents that do not involve any alcohol at all.

The researchers are concluding that there is no level of alcohol that can be considered safe for driving.  Even persons with minute traces of alcohol in the system could be at a higher risk of accidents involving serious injuries, and may not even know it. The reason for this increased risk of serious injury in accidents when persons are driving even with minute traces of alcohol, are not hard for Los Angeles car accident lawyers to understand.  Drivers under the influence of alcohol are likely to experience a pleasurable buzz that induces them to engage in reckless driving behavior, like driving at excessive speeds.  Bottom line is that any degree of drunk driving increases the risk of accidents exponentially.

These people are likely to feel their adrenaline flowing, contributing to aggressive driving.  Besides, motorists who are driving under the influence of alcohol are not likely to wear seat belts, or to insist that the occupants of their car buckle up too.  These people are at a much high risk of being severely injured in an accident.  Persons who are driving under the influence of alcohol are more likely to be driving the vehicle at fault in the accident.

 

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