Threat even greater for LGBTs, who have higher rates of alcohol abuse
Momentum is building for the last blast of the 2011 holiday season, but not everyone should count on waking up safe and sound in their own bed on New Year’s Day with the traditional celebratory hangover.
The more fortunate partygoers will find themselves on an old friend’s sofa, in bed with a new friend or even in a jail cell with a bunch of strangers. But the less lucky won’t be waking up at all because they will be part of the year’s statistics on impaired driving fatalities.
That’s why U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he kicked off a nationwide crackdown on impaired driving on Dec. 13 in an attempt to remind Americans they risk killing others or themselves if they get behind the wheel drunk or stoned.
Impaired driving fatality statistics for 2010 released by the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed a decrease in many states in comparison to the previous year, but 10,228, or one-third, of the fatalities on American highways still involved intoxication.
David Webb The Rare Reporter
The fatality statistics spiked during the second half of December, when drinking traditionally becomes more prevalent apparently because of holiday parties. The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported that 40 percent of traffic deaths during the Christmas and New Year’s Eve holidays involved drunken driving.
The risk increases during the holidays because it is a time when many people uncharacteristically drink to excess and take on one of the characteristics of what is known as hardcore drunken driving.
Hardcore drunken driving refers to anyone who gets behind the wheel with a blood-alcohol account of 0.15 or above, does so repeatedly and is resistant to changing that behavior. For the past decade, fatality statistics show that 70 percent of impaired drivers responsible for the deaths had a blood-alcohol account of 0.15 or higher.
It is an issue of particular concern to the LGBT community because many studies have shown a high incidence of alcohol and drug abuse among its members.
In connection with the national anti-drunken driving campaign that carries the slogan, “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over,” alcohol awareness educators are warning revelers to understand how beer, wine and liquor affect the human body. Many occasional and frequent drinkers apparently harbor misconceptions about the effects of alcohol.
Alcohol impairs coordination, driving skills, reflex time and judgment long before the drinker or anyone else notices signs of intoxication, and it can spark aggression that makes the driver more dangerous on the road.
Even after an individual quits drinking, alcohol in the stomach continues to enter the bloodstream and affect the brain for hours. Coffee or other caffeine drinks do not reduce the effects of alcohol and do not make the impaired driver any safer. Only time can counteract the detrimental effects of alcohol.
Educators advise party-goers to take a cab or to designate someone to drive who isn’t drinking. Otherwise, anyone planning to get behind the wheel should not have any more than one alcoholic drink per hour, and it would be a good idea for every other drink to be nonalcoholic.
No one should rely on someone else to monitor and take care of then on New Year’s Eve or any other holiday party. No matter whether the reveler is at a private party or a nightclub, the person in charge may be far too busy to notice the drinker is impaired.
The bottom line is that many citizens who typically would not dream of breaking the law risk doing exactly that if they drink to excess and try to drive themselves home. The legal limit is 0.08 in most states these days, and that only amounts to two or three drinks for many people.
Others who have problems with alcohol and other drugs should seek help before they get behind the wheel again and risk the lives of themselves and others.
Anyone who drives drunk this New Year’s Eve risks getting arrested, being jailed, bonding out of jail, hiring a lawyer, going to court, possibly going back to jail, serving probation and making huge financial expenditures. It is estimated that a drunken driving charge costs about $20,000 when all of the expenses — including increased insurance costs —are tallied.
That is the risk if the drunken driver is lucky and doesn’t have an accident resulting in an injury or fatality. In a worse-case scenario, there won’t ever never be an end to the anguish and devastation affecting everyone involved.
That’s cause enough not to ever go there in the first place.
David Webb is a veteran journalist who has reported on LGBT issues for the mainstream and alternative media for three decades. E-mail him at davidwaynewebb@hotmail.com.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 30, 2011.
I think that after the accident on Cedar Springs this week, your article should have also included “cell phone use” along with substance abuse. This is the issue I have with MADD,they seem to focus only on alcohol use, and not all forms of impaired driving. Tests have concluded that using a phone is just as dangerous as driving drunk. Just heard on the radio that Texas has more impaired accidents than any other state. Perhaps we need to expand our thinking on the matter to make the roads safer-holidays and beyond.