Katie Evans was returning home after visiting her eight-week-old twin baby girls in a hospital intensive care unit. Her premature daughters were getting stronger and gaining weight. Katie was happy as she drove away from the hospital. She would never make it to her California home.
Katie was killed in a head-on collision with a vehicle that hit a curb and sideswiped another car before careening into her auto. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Police ruled the death an apparent DUI (Driving Under the Influence) crash. The other driver was a 22-year old woman.
That same week a driver in Oregon was charged with DUI after his vehicle plowed into a auto carrying a 25-year old mother and her four children, ages two to eight years old. All four were killed. Police arrested a 27-year old driver whose blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit.
This was not the first time the Oregon suspect had been arrested for drunk driving. He had three previous arrests for the same misdemeanor. That is not unusual. Twenty-seven percent of those responsible for DUI crashes have been involved in collisions or have drunk driving convictions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the average alcohol impaired driver has driven drunk more than 80 times before his or her first arrest. That figure should be sufficient evidence that law enforcement efforts to stop drunk driving have been largely unsuccessful.
Statistics compiled by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) offer a further indictment of the nation's failure to deal with the issue. After dramatic declines in alcohol-impaired driving crashes over the last 30 years, fatalities reached a four-year plateau in 2015.
There were 10,265 fatalities involving impaired driving in 2015, the latest year for which figures are available. A total of 181 children 14-years and younger were among the victims. In addition, more than 290,000 people suffered injuries in accidents involving drunk drivers.
Not only have fatalities risen, but authorities have seen a jump in the alcohol level of drunk drivers. A blood alcohol level of .08% is considered impaired in all 50 states. In 2015, 67% of the crashes involved at least one driver with a level of .15% or higher. That's nearly twice the legal limit.
Nothing can compensate for the loss of even one life. But it is not the only cost of drunk driving. The NHTSA calculates that alcohol-related accidents result in a $44 billion annual tab in medical expenses, property damage, legal and court costs and workplace losses.
So what can be done to stop the senseless carnage?
The first order should be to get convicted drunk drivers out from behind the wheel of a car. Some states mandate ignition interlocks in cars for repeat offenders that keep the vehicle from starting if the driver's alcohol level exceeds a modest limit. However, not all states have adopted this measure.
After two convictions, courts should take away all driving privileges until the offender has successfully completed a sobriety program. Driving is not a right. People who continue to be arrested for DUI are threats to society and should be dealt with accordingly.
Some states allow the arresting officer to take away the license of a driver than tests above the legal blood alcohol limit. Those who refuse testing should be treated the same. Suspending a drunk driver's license for 90-days also has shown to reduce fatalities.
Police sobriety checkpoints are another weapon in the war against drunk driving. But these campaigns often only operate around the holidays. Most drunk driving fatalities occur at night and on the weekends. Year-round checkpoints in the evenings could prevent more fatal accidents.
Even if successful, none of these measures will totally eliminate drunk driving. Law enforcement, aided by the media, needs to put faces and personal stories with the statistics. Perhaps, that will make people pause before they drink and drive if they hear about a child's tragic death.
Like so much that's wrong in society today, unless individuals change, the government alone cannot solve the problem. If you know someone with an alcohol problem, intervene and get that individual in treatment. You may prevent a tragedy. That is the first line of defense against drunk driving.
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