A Research Essay On Drinking And Driving In The Usa
Drinking and driving has been a problem since cars were invented. Car accidents happen all over the world. Innocent people die everyday due to the stupidity of drunk drivers getting behind the wheel. People that pick up their kids, go to work, or run everyday errands can have their lives destroyed. Their lives can just be taken away by that one dumb person that gets behind the wheel when they are drunk.
Many car accidents are caused by the combination of people thinking that they are sober after they have been drinking. Many deaths have occurred, Iin 2017, 37,133 people died in a traffic crash while Twenty nine percent of those killed, or ten thousand eight hundred seventy four, were due to drunk drivers. In 2006 in Vermont they found that among drivers arrested for drinking-driving or drunk driving, fifty eight percent were beer drinkers, twelve percent were spirits drinkers, and three percent wine drinkers. In 2008 from all fatal crashes were thirty two percent because of alcohol users. Most consistent relationships were between substance use addiction.
This story is about three boys that were part of a car accident and got hit by a drunk driver, the guy Robert that’s telling the story was eighteen years old when the car accident happen and still in high school. And a couple months away from graduating, and he was already accepted for his new college. It was a normal school day and he was hanging with his buddies, Garrett and Ryan. They were on their way to get some food, after playing some computer. They stopped for a red light and waited till it turned green. The light turned green so Garrett turned left when their car turned left a car hit them with full speed. Robert got thrown out of the back widow from the car, he landed face first and broke every bone between his eyebrows and chin. His head had several cuts, his leg was twisted under his body and his right arm was covered in blood. The first car that stopped by the accident was a retired fireworker, he called 911. When the fireworker checked if Robert was still alive he thought that he was dead. His other two friends were still in the car, Garrett suffered a punctured lung and his other friend Ryan broke his pelvis. But his two friends were wearing their seatbelts, and they were alive.
The guy that was driving the car that hit them was a twenty two years old man. He only broke his leg. The police told them later that the guy was driving one hundred miles per hour when he hit them. He also had been using alcohol, and the police told them that his blood alcohol level was three times higher then the legal legal blood alcohol limit. Robert got take to the hospital by helicopter which he had no known from. He has no memories of all the operations that he had. Because he was in a coma for two weeks after the car accident. When he woke up he had tubes around his body and more doctors were standing around him that he had ever seen before. As he said himself he was a mess, his eyesight was blurry, his head was cloudy but that was part because of his painkillers on, and part was because of his head that got slammed into the road and that pushed his brain against his skull. The drunk driver got ten years in the Texas state penitentiary. Ever since he woke up at the hospital he never felt as the old him. He mostly felt angry, because he doesn’t understand how someone can get behind the wheel while he is drunk and risk his whole life. And the other people on the road, he is risking all of their lives too. He wants people to know how dumb and live changing it is when you get behind the wheel when they have been drinking a few beers. The scars that he has been sustained because of the accident, cover his whole face and head, all over his arms, running down his neck, stomach and legs. He wants them to see how he is trying to get his live back to normal.
This is one of the thousand stories what happens after the combination of drinking and driving, as Robert is telling it changed his whole life. He was about to graduate and go start a new live at his college in Florida, but this car accident changed everything. He could not walk, he had problems with thinking, his face and body are totally messed up. He will never be the old him anymore. He can never go somewhere without feel of think about the car accident.
In 2016 Washington, Oregon, Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina had the highest taxes on distilled spirits in the whole United States. The taxes in Washington on alcohol were $33. 54, the taxes in Oregon was $22. 74, the taxes in Virginia was $19. 86, the taxes in Alabama was $18. 25, and the taxes in North Carolina was $12. 48. Missouri, West Virginia, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, had the lowest taxes on distilled spirits in the whole United States. The taxes in Missouri was $2. 00, the taxes in West Virginia was $2. 11, the taxes in Colorado was $2. 28, the taxes in Texas was $2. 40, the taxes in Louisiana and Kansas was both $2. 50.
If you want to drink but still drive you have to follow these drinking rules. One drink equals one and a half ounces of eighty proof liquor (forty percent alcohol), twelve ounces of beer (four and a half percent alcohol), or five ounces of wine (twelve percent alcohol). So if you drink this much or more, you are driving illegally. So with a blood alcohol of 0. 8 percent of more. The jail times and fines for the first offence are ten days to one year jail time and up to one thousand dollars fine. By the second offence it is one year to five year jail time and up to two thousand five hundred dollars fine. And by the third offence it is one year to ten years jail time and up to five thousand dollars fine. One and a half million people arrested in a given year for driving under the influence of alcohol of drugs. That means that one out of every one hundred twenty one licensed drivers were arrested for drunk driving. Even more shocking, twenty five percent of those one and a half million people have even been drinking alcohol at the time of the event. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that in the year 2000, about fourteen hundred automobile accidents involving fatalities had been caused by a driver with at least one other DUI or DWI conviction. This accounts for about eight and a half percent of all alcohol-involved automobile accidents where a fatality has occurred.
During these car accidents are also kids in the cars. Between 2001 and 2010, two thousand three hundred forty four children under the age of fifteen years old were killed in crashes involving at least 1 alcohol-impaired driver. One thousand five hundred fifteen (sixty five percent) of these kids were riding with an impaired driver. Among the thirty seven states that are included in the state-level analysis, Texas and California had the most children killed while riding with an impaired driver and South Dakota and New Mexico had the highest annualized child passenger death rates per one hundred thousand children. Most child passengers of impaired drivers were unrestrained at the time of the crash. One-third of the impaired drivers did not have a valid driver’s license.
You also get a license suspension for drunk driving. By the first offence you get a driver’s license suspension from up to six months. For the second offence you get a driver’s license suspension for a one year and one hundred twenty days for DWI and then a twelve months waiting period to reinstate the license. For the third offence you get a driver’s license suspension for eighteen months and then a eighteen months waiting period to reinstate the license. Some people even have fourth of fifth offence. For the fourth offence you get a driver’s license suspension for eighteen months and then a twenty four months waiting period to reinstate the license. And for the fifth offence you don’t even get your license back anymore.
The conclusion of my research paper is that, you can’t go behind the wheel if you have been drinking to much alcohol. You can completely change your life or that from someone else. You can even die or kill someone else. People can have the biggest dreams and that drunk driver can completely change and destroy those dreams with just one wrong decision, it can only take 2 seconds and you can kill someone or their future plans are completely ruined. If they survive the crash they will never be their old-selfs, they will always have some scarfs left or big burns because the car was burned away. They can even have brain injury and never think normal again. Some of the victims were maybe super good sporters, and they can never play that sport again in their whole live. Or they had a grown family with little kids and a wife or husband. Those people stay left behind. Or think about persons that lose their kids in accident like this. So the moral of this research paper is: don’t step behind the wheel while you are drunk you change someone’s live completely and that of his loved ones.
