The Dangers of Drinking and Driving Essay

Submitted By colek2
Words: 801
Pages: 4

Drunk Driving
Imagine being in a bar with some friends, everyone is drinking and having a great time; you are way too drunk to drive. You are going to leave and go home and have a high risk of endangering someone but instead your nice friends remind you of it and call a cab for you. Drinking and driving is a very serious problem that we all have to face in our society today. Drunk driving is a crime that is very dangerous and very deadly to everyone. Many people drive under the influence of alcohol every day. It also leads to thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries yearly.
The death rate per year due to drunk driving is off the charts and is even higher for injuries. People die in car crashes every day because of this entirely preventable crime. It is estimated that every 52 minutes someone is killed in a dunk driving accident and every 90 seconds, someone is injured. This goes to show how serious drinking and driving is and how much it affects the world daily. It also endangers the safety of many children. In 2010, 211 children were killed in drinking and driving related accidents. Out of these 211, 131 of them were riding with the drunk driver. This is very dangerous and that the deadliness of this cause is destroying families forever. The more alcohol concentration in your body, the higher the risk of a fatal crash. If you are driving at a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .15% or more, your chances of a fatal crash increases by 200%. Even when people know about the risk, they still go on thinking that they will never end up hurting or killing someone. People should be smarter than to endanger everyone around them. Drinking and driving can be stopped with the support of others who care about this crime. However, there is more than one problem with drinking and driving than the dangers of it.
Even when people know and understand the risk that they are taking when they drive impaired, they still continue to do so today. It is estimated that Americans make over 233 billion trips a year. And 1 in every 2000 trips is taken by someone under the influence of alcohol. That is equivalent to 116 500 000 trips taken under the influence of alcohol per year. We need to show more attention to the people leaving bars and clubs for that is too many trips taken with alcohol and that is very dangerous. People continue doing this, not thinking of the damage that they could bring to others. Drunk drivers admit that they do this because they either don’t think; they think they won’t get in trouble or they are too lazy to call a cab. This is serious because it means that people should start taking driving more seriously and have more respect for the law and others. Also, the penalties don’t seem stiff enough to smack some sense into these people. For a first time offender, the person is fined $1000 and given a sentence of up to 12 months in prison in a case involving death. People don’t think