Every single weekend night, in nearly every emergency department (ED) in America, there is a patient injured by a drunk driver. Some of these people are fortunate and escape with only scrapes, bruises, and dents in their cars. Unfortunately, others are not so lucky. As we rush to put in central lines, suture wounds, and splint broken bones, we have to shake our heads at the unnecessary carnage—in the ED at 2 AM on Saturday, this problem feels overwhelming. For decades, there have been public health messages and campaigns focused on pushing the public not to drive after drinking, with messages that driving under the influence of alcohol causes deadly and life-altering crashes, that drunk drivers get caught and prosecuted (“You Drink, You Drive, You Lose” and “Under the influence Under arrest”), and placing an emphasis on social responsibility (“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk”). As a result, the percentage of fatal crashes thought to be alcohol related is on the decline, to approximately 37% in 2008. The authors believe 37% is still far too many deaths from drunk drivers. In this National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report, the authors were dismayed to and that as recently as 2008, drivers aged 16 years and older had a 20% incidence of driving a motor vehicle within 2 hours of drinking alcohol. The authors were hoping the American public had progressed past this point and were less willing to drive after drinking. In fact, the number of trips after drinking appears to be increasing; an estimated 85.5 million episodes of driving within a short period of drinking in the recent study is up from 75.7 million trips in 2004. Men were responsible for the majority (78%) of these trips after drinking. As emergency physicians, we were not surprised by the effects of drinking on crash severity: 32% of fatal crashes involved a drinking driver. (Author/publisher)
Abstract