DUIs problem in the United States; let’s fix it!

Drunk driving costs many lives each year in the United States. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2016, drunk driving, alone, took 10,497 people’s lives, 1,233 of them were children under 14. The CDC says that on average 28 people in the United States die in a crash involving an alcohol-impaired driver per day. This is a serious problem in the United States that isn’t getting any better. CDC says that the United States annual cost of alcohol-related crashes cost more than $44 billion.

In many other countries around the world, especially Europe, the legal drinking age is younger, but their DUI laws are much stricter than the United States. According to attorney Jon Bryant Artz, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia have no tolerance for any trace of alcohol in the bloodstream. While according to the NHTSA, the United States, it is illegal to have a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher g/dL in the bloodstream. Although that doesn’t seem like a lot of alcohol in the blood, it can still impair the driver. In 2016, over 2,000 people were killed in crashes where the drivers had a BAC between .01 to .07 g/dL.

For underage DUIs in the United States, the BAC depends on the state, but can range anywhere from .03 g/dL to any measurable amount of alcohol. NOLO, a driving law site, says that the penalties for underage DUIs can be any one or more of the following: fines from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, up to a year in jail, community service, substance abuse classes or treatment, or having to install an ignition interlock device.

These penalties have not been able to stop people, especially underage people from drinking and driving. According to Taja Davis with Local News 8, Idaho is the 8th worst teen driving state.

“In the US, motor-vehicle accidents continue to be the leading cause of death among the teenage population,” said Davis. They also said that Idaho is 38th for teen DUIs per teen population. Where 1 is the best, 50 is the worst, and 25 is average. This shows Idaho is on the worse side of that statistic, which shows to everyone in Idaho that there is a problem in Idaho specifically.

These statistics show how bad our DUI problem is in the United States and specifically in Idaho and why we as a state and a nation need to change the laws for the legal BAC and the punishments for underage DUIs and DUIs to fix this problem. It’ll save lives!