Drinking and driving continues to be a significant cause of car accidents in New Madrid, Missouri and throughout the state and the country. New Madrid Missouri car accident lawyers bring you this Safety Alert from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to help spread the awareness campaign that helps highlight the problem. 
This Safety Alert also provides facts to help educate everyone about the results of hard core drinking and driving. The NTSB provides safety alerts in the hopes of making our highways and roadways safer and to save lives.
Part of the NTSB's mission is to issue safety alerts in conjunction with the most wanted list of the advocacy's priorities to reduce the dangers that plague transportation. This Safety Alert is to target Hard Core Drinking Drivers in order to get habitual drinking drivers off the nation's highways. Habitual drinking drivers and habitual traffic offenders plague the streets of New Madrid County and roads throughout southeast Missouri. Therefore the New Madrid Missouri car accident lawyers think it is important to share this safety alert.
Hard Core Drinking Drivers Defined
NTSB defines a hard core dinking driver as someone who has blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels of 0.15 percent or greater or who are repeat offenders with one or more drunk driving arrests or convictions in the past ten years. They are targeted with a safety alert because these hard core drinking drivers are involved in more than 70 percent of the alcohol impaired car accident fatalities.
Drinking and Driving Facts
- One alcohol impaired driving fatality occurs about every 45 minutes in the United States.
- One person was killed or injured in drinking related accidents every 2.2 hours in 2010 in Missouri.
- 10,839 people died nationwide in alcohol-impaired car accidents in 2009.
- 218 people were killed and 3,823 were injured in Missouri in 2010 in drinking related traffic accidents.
- Out of 379 car accidents in 2010 in New Madrid 29 involved alcohol.
- 51.1% of drinking involved accidents in 2010 occurred in rural areas.
- Nationwide 251,000 people died in car accidents involving hard core drinking drivers between 1982 and 2009.
- Of all drivers arrested or convicted of driving while intoxicated or driving under the influence of alcohol one-third are repeat offenders.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) reports there are strong indicators that drinking and driving is under-reported. Alcohol indicators are not always obvious in serious accident situations, and sometimes injuries cause the same symptoms as alcohol intoxication. Sometimes there may not be enough evidence of alcohol infraction to arrest someone. So it is safe to say that the numbers listed are low and do not indicate the full impact of the problem.
Hard Core Drinking in Missouri
218 people dead in 2010 is not a low number, especially if one of those people is a friend or loved one. MSHP, as well as local law enforcement agencies, conduct alcohol sobriety check points for this reason. The NTSB has a slogan, Compass Zero. It means they want the number of traffic related deaths to be zero. That is why they put out the Safety Alert for Hard Core Drinking Drivers. That is why MSHP conducts related campaigns including sobriety check points.
New Madrid Missouri car accident lawyers want this number reduced also. That is why we shared the Safety Alert. In doing so we want to see the number of car accidents and related deaths and injuries decrease also.
For more information, or to schedule a meeting with one of our lawyers, visit our website or call us at (573) 334-7959.
