Category: Drunk Driving

A multiple vehicle collision on January 18 injured two and killed one on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Alcohol was thought to be contributing factor to the accident, highlighting yet again the prevalence of DUI incidents on the roads of Illinois.

In an attempt to discover the role of alcohol on death rates in the United States, researchers from the United States National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism conducted a study comparing death certificates to information gathered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). The results indicated a large discrepancy between the two. Highway data showed that 21 percent of the fatal accidents involved alcohol, while less than four percent of the death certificates indicated that the cause of death was alcohol related.

In motor vehicle crashes, many people place blame on a vehicle malfunction, a defect in the road or road construction. These factors do play a role in car accidents, but in the majority of cases, the primary causes are speeding or driving aggressively. According to the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Division of Traffic Safety, there were 274,291 crashes in 2012. Twenty-two percent of these were injury crashes, and there were 956 fatalities.

In 2012, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that more than 10,000 deaths in the United States were directly related to alcohol, and nearly 350,000 injuries. In Illinois alone, there were 321 fatalities caused by drunk driving, and 41 of those deaths were caused by motorists whose blood alcohol content was above .01, but under .08, which is the legal limit.

A Hebron, Connecticut woman is facing felony charges after she hit and killed a teacher at a local middle school while buzzed. NBC Connecticut reports that the woman was dropping her son off at school when she drove into a designated bus lane. After she realized her mistake, she put the car in reverse and struck a 65-year-old math teacher who worked at the school. The teacher sustained severe head injuries as a result of the crash and died a few days later. Law enforcement officers found no issues with the vehicle, and even indicated that the car had a functioning back up camera. The driver was found to have a 0.07 blood alcohol content at the time of the crash.