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How many people die in drunk-driving crashes a day?
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How many people have been killed in drunk driving crashes in 2021?
In every state, it’s illegal to drive drunk, yet one person was killed in a drunk-driving crash every 39 minutes in the United States in 2021. Car crashes are a leading cause of death for teens, and about a quarter of fatal crashes involve an underage drinking driver.
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- Distracted Driving
- Impaired Driving Is an Important Public Health Problem
- Impaired Driving Impacts Thousands of People in the United States Each Year
- Alcohol and Other Drugs Impact the Skills Needed for Safe Driving
- Despite the Risk, Millions of People Drive Impaired in the United States Each Year
- Some Groups Are More at Risk for Impaired Driving and Related Crashes and Deaths
- You Can Prevent Impaired Driving
- States and Communities Can Prevent Impaired Driving
- Footnotes
- Related Pages
- Additional Resources
•In 2020, 11,654 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers, accounting for 30% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.1 This was a 14.3% increase compared to the number of crash deaths involving alcohol-impaired drivers in 2019.1
•32 people in the United States are killed every day in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver—this is one death every 45 minutes.1
•The annual estimated cost of crash deaths involving alcohol-impaired drivers totaled about $123.3 billion* in 2020.2 These costs include medical costs and cost estimates for lives lost.
•Drug-impaired driving is also an important public health problem3; however, less is known about the harmful effects of drug-impaired driving compared to alcohol-impaired driving because of data limitations.4
•62% of people who died in crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers in 2020 were the alcohol-impaired drivers themselves; 38% were passengers of the alcohol-impaired drivers, drivers or passengers of another vehicle, or nonoccupants (such as a pedestrian).1
•229 children ages 0–14 years were killed in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver in 2020. This was 21% of traffic-related deaths among children ages 0–14 years.1
Safe driving requires focus, coordination, good judgment, and quick reactions to the environment. Any alcohol or other drug use impairs the ability to drive safely.
The amount of alcohol in a person’s system can be measured. This measurement is called blood alcohol concentration (BAC). Most states have set the legal BAC limit for driving at 0.08 grams of alcohol per deciliter (g/dL); the limit is 0.05 g/dL in Utah.6 However, impairment starts at lower BAC levels. Information on the effects of alcohol on driving at a range of BACs is available here.
We know a lot about alcohol’s effects on driving, but more research is needed to fully understand the impact of drugs on driving skills.7 However, research has shown that both legal and illicit drugs impair the skills needed to drive safely. For example:
•Some of the effects of being impaired by marijuana that can affect driving include slowed reaction time and decision making, impaired coordination, and distorted perception.7–10
•Other drugs (such as cocaine or illicit amphetamines) can also impair skills like perception, memory, and attention in the short or long term.7
•Prescription and over-the-counter medications can cause many side effects that can impact driving, such as sleepiness, impaired vision, and impaired coordination.11
About 1 million arrests are made in the United States each year for driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.13,14 However, results from national self-report surveys show that these arrests represent only a small portion of the times impaired drivers are on the road.
Results from the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) indicated that the estimated number of U.S. residents ages 16 years and older who drove under the influence in the past year was:
•18.5 million for alcohol (7.2% of respondents ages 16 years and older),
•11.7 million for marijuana (4.5% of respondents ages 16 years and older), and
•2.4 million for illicit drugs other than marijuana (0.9% of respondents ages 16 years and older).15
Data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System indicated that 1.2% of adults drove after having too much to drink in the past 30 days in 2020. This resulted in an estimated 127 million episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among US adults.16
Teen drivers and passengers
•Drinking any amount of alcohol before driving increases crash risk among teen drivers.17,18 Teen drivers have a much higher risk for being involved in a crash than older drivers at the same blood alcohol concentration (BAC), even at BAC levels below the legal limit for adults ages 21 years and older.18
•Among U.S. high school students who drove in 2019, about 5% drove after drinking alcohol in the prior 30 days.19 Also, among all high school students, about 17% rode with a driver who had been drinking alcohol in the prior 30 days.19
•Among U.S. high school students who drove in 2017, about 13% drove when they had been using marijuana in the prior 30 days.20,21
Young adult drivers
•Among drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2020, the percentage of drivers who were impaired by alcohol was highest among drivers 21–24 years old and 25–34 years old (26% each).1
What drivers can do
•Plan ahead. If you plan to drink alcohol or use drugs, make plans so that you do not have to drive.
•Get a ride home. If you have been drinking alcohol and/or using drugs, get a ride home with a driver who has not been drinking or using drugs, use a rideshare service, or call a taxi.
•Agree on a trusted designated driver ahead of time. If you are with a group, agree on a trusted designated driver in the group who will not drink alcohol or use drugs.
•Be aware of prescriptions and over-the-counter medicines. It’s not just alcohol, marijuana, and illicit drugs that can impair your ability to drive. Many types of prescription medicines and some over-the-counter medicines can also affect your ability to drive safely, either on their own or when combined with alcohol. Avoid driving if you are unsure how a medicine may affect you, if it has side effects that can harm your ability to drive, or if your doctor tells you not to drive after using a medicine.
What everyone can do
Effective measures for preventing alcohol-impaired driving include:
Laws and enforcement
•Actively implementing and enforcing lower BAC limits.25
•Globally, most high-income countries have BAC laws set at 0.05 g/dl or lower,26,27 and these laws are effective for reducing crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers and deaths from these crashes.25 These laws serve as a general deterrent and reduce alcohol-impaired driving, even among drivers who are at highest risk of impaired driving.25
•Utah implemented a 0.05 g/dL BAC law in 2018; the other 49 states and the District of Columbia (DC) have a BAC limit of 0.08 g/dL.6,28 Utah’s 0.05 g/dL BAC law was associated with an 18% reduction in the motor vehicle crash death rate per mile driven in the first year after it went into effect. The new law was also associated with lower alcohol involvement in crashes.28
•An estimated 1,790 lives could be saved each year if all states adopted a 0.05 g/dl BAC limit.29
* In 2020 U.S. dollars
† These percentages are based on passenger vehicle occupants for which seat belt use/nonuse was known.
Sep 15, 2023 · As of 2023, every day, 37 people in the United States die in car crashes with an alcohol-impaired driver. This is one death every 39 minutes. (CDC) More than a quarter (31%) of all traffic-related deaths are the direct result of alcohol impairment. (NHTSA) There were 13,384 deaths from drunk driving crashes in 2021.
- The Zebra
3 days ago · There were 13,384 people killed in drunk-driving crashes in 2021 (about one person every 39 minutes), an increase of 14% over the previous year. About 31 percent of all fatal car crashes in 2021 involved drunk drivers.
Nov 2, 2021 · Since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began recording alcohol-related statistics in 1982, the number of persons under 21, killed in drunk driving crashes decreased 75% from the record high of 5,215 in 1982 to 1,318 in 2021, a 46 percent increase from a record low 904 lives lost in 2019.
Alcoholic liver disease was the most frequent underlying cause for alcohol-induced deaths. In 2019 and 2020, alcoholic liver disease was the most frequent cause of alcohol-induced death, followed by mental and behavioral disorders due to use of alcohol (Figure 5).
Oct 3, 2018 · WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 3, 2018) — Drunk driving claimed the lives of almost 11,000 people in 2017 and 2016, according to new data released today by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that shows drunk driving remains the leading cause of death on our nation’s roads.
