The risk of dying in a car accident related to alcohol

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Vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death in people in the United States from 1 to 34 years of age. Nearly half of all traffic fatalities (17,700 in 1992) is related to alcohol consumption. More, 2 out of 5 people in this country have some degree of involvement with motor vehicle accidents at some point in their lives. The risk of a fatal accident increases rapidly as the concentration of alcohol in blood of a driver increases. A concentration of 100 mg / dL increases by 7 times the chance of that involved in a fatal accident. If the alcohol concentration is 150 mg / dl, the risk will be 25 times higher.

Reports show that people who drive intoxicated by alcohol do repeatedly. To confirm this hypothesis and that these drivers would be subject to a higher risk of fatal accidents, researchers studied the deaths in car accidents for 10 years in the state of North Carolina, in the United States. The researchers compared individuals with blood alcohol concentrations of 20 mg / dL or more (cases) to subjects with blood alcohol concentrations below this value (controls).

A total of 1646 cases and 1474 controls were compared (all these died in car accidents). When compared, individuals 21-34 years of the case group (alcohol concentration in the blood of at least 20 mg / dL) had 4.3 times greater chance of being arrested while driving. In total, there were 26% of prisons in the group of cases and 3% in the control group.

The authors concluded that the fact of driving under the influence of alcohol increases the risk of eventual death by car accident. aggressive intervention in cases of arrests of people who drive drunk could lessen the chance of a future accident with fatality.