A few years ago, I was riding home from work when I was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The vehicle I was riding in was a Honda Odyssey. I’m still in disbelief that this happened, but I’m also very grateful I was riding in a car when it did.
One of the reasons I feel so strongly about riding in cars is because I’ve been hit or run over at least one time while riding in a car, even though I’ve never been hit by a car. It’s a terrible feeling.
If you’re not in a car, you’re really lucky. While I’ve never had to worry about my car being hit by a car, I’ve been in many situations where I’ve had to get out of the car to get help. While Ive been in a car before when I was hit by a car, it was by accident. However, I have also been in cars with a driver who was drunk and asleep at the wheel.
I’ve also seen people hitting cars with a scooter or other weapons, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
In my experience, people who get hit by cars are often the ones who weren’t paying attention at the time. A driver who is drunk (or is in a car without a driver) is the perfect example. Most of the time it’s not the driver who’s at fault, but the car, so the driver has no idea the car is coming. I’ve seen drivers hit by cars that have crossed the center line.
When drunk drivers cross the center line into oncoming traffic, they are doing a little something called “reversing into the inside lane” which requires them to swerve into the oncoming lane in order to avoid hitting other drivers who are drunk. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the dangers of driving drunk. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has a page on drunk driving statistics that is the best way to find out all the statistics on drunk driving.
Drunk driving is a huge problem which we only hear about every now and then because people just don’t report. This study from 2005 found that around 11.2 per 1000 people are killed in alcohol-related traffic accidents every year. In 2010, the number was close to 16.7 per 1000. It’s safe to assume that these figures are going to rise dramatically in coming years.
One of the first things people think about when they think of drunk driving is a sobering fact: the vast majority of drunk driving accidents involve people who didn’t have a beer in their car. Only around 5% of the people who are killed in drunk driving get sobered up. The next most common cause of death is heart attack.
If you add in alcohol and other drugs, the number rises to over 40 per 1000. The number of people killed in drunk driving accidents is now around the same as for car accidents. It’s no secret that drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death for Americans.
Of course, in an increasing trend, more and more cars these days are equipped with ignition interlock systems, which prevent drunk drivers from starting their cars. The ignition interlock systems are an ingenious way of keeping drunk drivers away from their cars and thus preventing accidents in the first place.