Drinking and Driving

Harbor Insurance Group

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Oct 12, 2012

Drinking and Driving

For a practice so routinely and vehemently advised against and for an action that bears with it so high a legal and moral consequence, the act of drinking and driving is still carried out at surprisingly high rates in the United States.   The standard blood alcohol content that denotes when a person is legally liable for being drunk is 0.08.  While the overall percentage of persons with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 who have then chosen to get behind the wheel of an automobile has decrease almost thirty percent in the past five years, over 112 million intoxicated drivers were present on US streets in 2010 alone.  However, those who drive while intoxicated usually have a much higher blood-alcohol content which on average is around 0.16.  This high level of alcohol in a person’s blood slows reaction time and decreases overall awareness which can lead to potentially fatal results when that person choses to drive a vehicle of any kind.  Persons who drink and drive with this high blood-alcohol content are 385 times more likely to be involved in a fatal accident than those who drive sober.   Inebriated drivers are in some way involved in about one in every three fatal car crashes resulting in thousands of deaths per year in the United States.  For the year 2009, the total number of alcohol related car accident fatalities reached almost 11,000 persons.  But even when there are no fatalities as a result of a person’s decision to drink and drive there are still grave consequences to that choice that include fines, prison time and the revoking of insurance payouts by insurance companies who will refuse to honor contracts with individuals who sustained a car crash due to intoxication. 

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