Good question. Many pro-drunk driving FReepers claim these are MADD made up statistics.
They are not.
The stats on DUI fatalites (and what makes up a fatality) are available through the NHTSA.
Google them for the numbers.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>How many of those accidents are caused by illegal aliens?
Every single DWI thread has this same question. It’s as if Americans are allowed to hate MADD and resist saftey measures to curtail DWI, but let one illegal alien get busted and......
And what? they should’nt be here in the first place? You’re correct and win the magic 8 ball!
Show me the stats where sobriety checkpoints are more effective than having the same 20 officers doing routine patrol work, stopping people with probable cause? You won't be able to. They are a unconstitutional invasion against unreasonable search and seizure.
“The stats on DUI fatalites (and what makes up a fatality) are available through the NHTSA.”
I’m not inclined to trust them, either. I’ve heard it said that they include all accidents in which anyone involved had consumed ay amount of alcohol.
Back 25 or so years ago, it was 70% of all accidents were caused by drunk drivers. The education and deterrence programs did a good job. Too good a job, because the number and severity of drunk driving accidents dropped drastically.
So, the drunk driving BAC threshold was lowered. Behold, another spike! More stringent and draconian penalties were obviously needed, and so were brought into play.
A couple more years pass by, and arrests once again fall off, so a new set of “weasel words” are used to artificially inflate “drunk driving” statistics.
Enter the phrase : “Alcohol Involved”. When you read this in a newspaper or a NHTSA document, you have been conditioned to automatically associate “AI” with “drunk”. In truth, “Alcohol Involved” only means that there was booze in one or both vehicles! No-one need have consumed any, it just has to be there!
For example: You are driving home from work and your wife asks you to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner. After picking up the bottle, you are t-boned by a little old lady who ran a stop sign. The cops see the booze in your car and you are first off treated like a drunkard, handcuffed and publically humiliated until you can prove sobriety, and secondly the accident is recorded as Alcohol Involved.
Ask me how I know this. All I’ll say is “First hand experience at the gentle hands of our local constabulary”.
Now the BAC limits are being lowered again. If you like tyrannical anti-drinking driving policies, go to Sweden. There, it’s a “zero tolerance” system. Any booze in your system whatsoever, you’re in the crowbar hotel for the night, and will have your licence suspended and some heavy fines to pay.
A world where guilt is automatically assumed and innocence must be proven doesn’t sound like a free world to me. Don’t even get me started on the illegal stop, search and seizure tactics used in every city at their DD check stops.
NHTSA is NOTORIOUS for falsifying or using bad information.
If the data is from NHTSA, as a standard rule, it should and must always be considered a dubious source.
Their standards for collecting data are more tenuous than algores global warming hockey stick.
Most DWI cases are tossed because the cops are just plain incomptetent in prosecuting the case. They get ROUTINELY caught in lies, they ROUTINELY falsify DWI reports (even to the point of prefilling out the reports), They do not do proper maintainance on brethalyzers, they do not use proper procedure in the roadside exercises, they do use out dated and already prohibited roadside exercises to justify an arrest and have that fact tossed in their face during cross exam.
Remember folks JURIES find these people not guilty.
Often times the cops are making boneheaded mistakes. (ie doing exams on uneven or unpaved surfaces)
Quoting NHTSA is laughable. (in once case HHTSA reported motocycle fatalities from a state THAT DID NOT RECORD MOTORCYCLE FATALITIES)