4 Million Drunk Drivers are Loose on the Streets

"drinking drunk drivers 4 million on the streets"

If you’ve been drinking, don’t reach for the keys, reach for your phone and call a cab.

The CDC has released a worrying report: 4 million drunk drivers are loose on the streets of the US. And that’s just an approximate number that stands for all buy five states, as the survey could not gather enough data to make a nation-wide statistic.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released the analysis results of the data gathered by a 2012 survey which asked respondents if they had been drinking in the past month, how many times it had happened before they went for a drive, and how many times did they think that their drinking was over the limit.

The results are sobering, to say the least. Almost 2 percent of all American adults – exactly 4.2 million, said that yes, they had been driving under the influence in the month prior to the survey. This turnout is more than worrying and should raise an alarm sign for the road safety authorities as well as for those who are making the decisions whether to drive or get a taxi.

According to the CDC report, about one third of the death from traffic accidents have been caused by drivers who irresponsibly went amok on the road while having drunk insanely more than the legal limit of 0.08%. Moreover, many of the respondents said that besides driving under the influence of alcohol, they also practice binge drinking, a practice that besides being bad for those around them, is also bad for their health.

Scot Karkower, a doctor specializing in alcohol excesses and treating people with drinking problems has indirectly blamed the social stigma that pushes down on drunkards. These people are just having problems, problems that could be treated by doctors. He further encourages them to seek help, despite the social opinion on them. Oftentimes those who drink will only be pushed towards more abuse by the demeaning eyes of those around them.

Almost a third of the people who said they did drink and drive and that they did binge drink were young men between the ages of 21 and 34. And 80% of all incidents of driving while drunk are attributed to men. The most worrying area because of drunk drivers is said to be Hawaii, where there were 995 instances of DUI for every 1,000 people.

Still, the agency was not able to gather results from Alaska, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia, so there could be much more drunk drivers out there.

Image source: mirror.co.uk

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Tara Hamilton

Tara has graduated from the University of Oregon, with bachelors degree in Spanish Literature in 2010. She lived in Miami for one year and travelled extensively before settling down in El Paso.