If you want to avoid involvement in a drunk driving accident, the best way to do it is to stay off of the roads during the night. That’s when far more DUI crashes occur.
For instance, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) notes that drunk driving is involved in just 9 percent of fatal accidents during the day, but it is involved in 34 percent of deadly accidents during the night. That means the risk is almost four times as great after the sun goes down.
The above statistic is for 2014, but the stats from 2016 are not much better. The daytime fatal DUI rate stayed the same, at 9 percent. At night, drunk drivers were involved in about 30 percent of deadly wrecks. While this is slightly lower, it does show that night driving is consistently the most dangerous thing you can do.
MADD also points out that someone suffers injuries in a drunk driving accident, on average, every two minutes. Since we can already see that most of these crashes happen at night, the two-minute average is a bit deceptive. The rate of injury is likely much higher when it is dark out, with people constantly getting hurt in drunk driving crashes.
What does this mean for you? Avoiding catastrophic injuries may not be possible if you cannot stay off the road at night. For instance, your schedule at work may mean you have to drive home in the dark during your daily commute. That puts you in danger, and it is very important to know all of the legal options you have if you get hit.
Source: MADD, “Statistics,” accessed June 01, 2018
