Ignition Interlocks

How many times have you been in the car with a drunk driver? Many young kids get in the car with drunk drivers and don’t even know it. For example, my good friend got in the car with a drunk driver and was in an accident. She ended up being hospitalized for many days. Even when she was released from the hospital, she was not the same. She had to go through months of physical therapy. Many people think that it is just “unlucky” to get stopped for drunk driving, or operating while intoxicated as it is called by the Michigan State Police. However, an average drunk driver drinks and drives at least 80 times before being arrested. At times, drivers who have been arrested for operating while intoxicated repeatedly are sometimes outfitted

In 2013, 10,076 people were killed in drunk driving incidents. Out of those people, 65% (6,515) were drivers, 27% (2,724) were passengers, and 8% (837) were non-passengers (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). Over half of those fatalities (67.1%) involved blood alcohol levels over .15% (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). The legal blood-alcohol content is .08%. Drunk driving caused 31% of deaths in car crashes in 2013 (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). In 2012, 402 people were killed by alcohol impairment in North Carolina (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). These numbers, though they seem astonishing, have been cut in half since 1991 (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). Even though the number of fatalities has been lowered, that number is not low enough. Most drunk drivers are repeat offenders. Lives are being taken because of the careless attitude of the drunk drivers. Drunk driving is selfish; those who commit this crime do not think about the extreme consequences of their actions. In North America it is estimated that 1-5 drivers has been drinking and 1 in 10 is legally impaired on any Friday or Saturday night (Root). Many groups, including MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), are fighting to stop drunk driving. Unfortunately, drunk driving cannot be stopped. People will always commit this heinous crime. The numbers may go down, but unfortunately there will always be a number. The only way to continually decrease the amount of lives lost is to increase punishments for drunk driving.

"Some say that MADD is in favor of putting interlocks in every car," McDonald said. "This is not the case. An interlock device is a method by which people demonstrate sobriety by actively doing something. We would never subject the population to that kind of thing by car. That's only for offenders."

Drinking and driving is a huge problem in the United States. When someone is driving while

Drunk driving is a painfully real problem in our country today. Traffic deaths numbered 37,461 in 2016, and 10,497 of those had alcohol to blame (“USDOT”). That means that 28% of all traffic deaths in 2016 involved a drunk

Driving under the influence is one of the deadliest outcomes of underage drinking. Though underage drinking is already a major issue, data supports that if the legal age to consume alcohol was lowered then underage drinking would increase greatly. A recent study found that higher legal drinking ages are associated with lower traffic accident rates” (“Should ”). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that keeping the legal drinking age at 21, decreased the number of fatal traffic accidents for 18- to 20-year-olds by 13 percent and saved approximately 27,052 lives from 1975-2008 (“Underage”). Furthermore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that, on average, alcohol is a factor in the deaths of 4,358

Driving a vehicle under the influence impedes the capability of an individual to drive safely. The people in the vehicle as well as on the streets are considered to be at risk. This indicator directs the link between transportation and negative health outcomes. This measure supports the policies and laws against alcohol impaired driving. The annual estimated cost of alcohol related motorized crashes in the United States is more than $59 billion (Blincoe et al., 2014). In the year 2012, a total of 10,322 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, which is around (31%) of all traffic related crashes in the United States (U.S. DOT, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2012).

In the PSA the social issue of drinking and driving is identified. But, not only is that issue addressed the issue of underage drinking is identified as well. Drinking and driving for underaged teens has a very high death rate. Annually, about 2,000 people under age 21 die from alcohol-related injuries involving underage drinking(Stim). Alcohol influences the brain

being charged with a “DUI” drove eighty-seven times under the influence prior to his or her

In 2014 there was 1,070 car accident deaths involving children from the age of 0-14 years of age, 19% of those car accident deaths were from alcohol Impaired drivers (CDC.gov,2016). Many individuals do not understand how critical it is to not drink and drive, the lives that are at stake when you decide to get behind the wheel and drive while under the influence. There are so many different types of public transportation that one can use to get to their destination. Many people do not know that there drunk be jade of the effects of the alcohol. Mentally they feel as if they are okay to drive up the street home, not realize how much of an effect the alcohol has done to their

From the day, the first motor vehicle was invented, the inventors did not realize that alcohol would become a problem for drivers. Although people tried taking keys away and designated drivers, fatalities involving drunk drivers continued to rise. With the advancement in technology, there had to be a way to prevent vehicles from being started if a person was under the influence of alcohol. Even though convicted drunk driving offenders already receive fines and jail time, ignition interlocks should be mandatory for all convicted drunk driving offenders because ignition interlocks reduce alcohol-related traffic crashes and ignition interlocks

Imagine receiving a call, in the middle of the night, informing you that someone you love or care for was just in a car accident, due to the effects of drinking and driving. Think about the anguish you and your family would be going through. Or imagine if you were the drunk driver and you hit someone else, what would you do? According to The drug free world, in the United States in 2007, the death toll from teenage drunk-driving accidents was 1,393 nearly four fatalities every day of the year.

In the year 2013, Texas lead the nation with an estimate of about 1,337 deaths caused by drunk drivers. At the beginning of the year 2016, the United States has had 31,721 deaths caused by alcohol alone. Everyone makes mistakes, but the difference between a mistake and a decision is that a decision can be prevented. Drinking while intoxicated can be avoided, unfortunately most people don’t understand the seriousness of the consequences that follow if one was to get pulled over or even kill someone. Drunk drivers should be punished by getting ignition interlocks, serving a longer prison sentence, or even put on death row. The potential benefits of punishing drunk drivers could possibly decrease the amount of accidents and deaths of innocent

“Drunk driving is a significant problem in the United States, costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year”(Preventing). Drunk driving is not just a huge problem in the United states, the whole world suffers from it. Some people do not see the real cost of drunk driving. When the driver is drunk, families have experienced losing a loved one, whether he or she was part of the problem or not. The driver that consumes a significant amount of alcohol cannot control him or herself, weaving in between lanes or running down innocent people on sidewalks or simply getting into a car accident. The world overlooks the effects of drunk driving, but it is a common problem that kills thousands every year.

It is also common knowledge that it is dangerous to get behind the wheel of a vehicle if you are under the influence of alcohol. Yet every day, almost 30 people in the United States are seriously injured in a motor vehicle accident that involved a drunk driver. After hearing, and seeing many cases on television and doing additional research for this speech I would like to encourage you to be become more a knowledge of the danger of drinking and driving. We will start by looking at the crisis of drinking and driving, and lastly, at the different types of options to prevent drinking and driving. The statistics of drinking and driving are familiar but they are also depressing.