Accidents Due To Drunk Driving
If you check the figures of accidents and deaths due to drunk driving, you are bound to get astonished it not outright shocked. Some 250,000 people have died in the last ten years because of alcohol related accidents. Every week 500 people die due to alcohol related accidents and 71 die daily because of these accidents. In America, one person dies every 20 minutes in an alcohol related car accident. Every year some 74,000 people are seriously injured due to alcohol related car crashes. One of out every two Americans is likely to be involved in an alcohol related accident in his / her life time.
These statistics are too mind boggling to be true but unfortunately they are real statistics and are true.
Every year drunk drivers are costing tax payers a huge amount. Taxpayers are paying $21 billion to $24 billion dollars on account of drunk drivers. According to National Geographic, alcohol costs Americans $136 billion dollars annually.
There seems to be a link between binge drinking and accidents. It has been seen that binge drinkers are 13 times more likely to drive a car after driving 5 or more drinks in a short span of time.
If you have been unfortunate enough to be injured by a drunk driver then you may be entitled to compensation either by the driver or his / her insurance company. There have been instances when pedestrians and their immediate family have received compensation when the pedestrian has got injured due to a drunk driving accident. The compensation is normally in the form of payment for medical treatment, loss of past and future income and emotional trauma.
In a few cases, the injured person can get compensation from the bar or restaurant that provided the alcohol to the driver. These cases are extremely complicated and difficult to prove.
However, punitive damages have been imposed on drunk drivers to deter drunk driving in future. |
