Taimoor Rana is seasoned criminal defense attorney specializing in DUI related cases. He shares his expert legal opinion here « Have a Close look at DUI Fatality Statistics
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- The numbers of deaths on the highways caused by drunk drivers has justified the "DUI crackdown", along with the loss of constitutional rights. As it has been said by the U.S. Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz, for instance, DUI "sobriety checkpoints" seems to be violating our Fourth Amendment right to be free of suspicion less stops by the police but this illegal intrusion on our privacy is "outweighed" by the "carnage" on our highways of 25,000 deaths that occur due to drunk driving each year.
What is the source of these statistics? Several years ago, the statistics that had been kept on traffic fatalities by law enforcement agencies included a category for "alcohol-caused" deaths. However, these statistics were subtly changed to "alcohol-related" in order to justify such things as sobriety checkpoints, lowered blood alcohol levels and automatic at-the-scene DUI license suspensions. Here you must note that they changed it to “DUI related", but not “DUI caused”.
This meant that a perfectly sober driver by whom an intoxicated pedestrian is hit and killed, for instance, would be considered to be involved in an "alcohol-related" incident. Same is the case, when a sober driver who is hit by another sober driver who is carrying an intoxicated passenger chalked up another "alcohol-related" death. Moreover, if it is believed by the officer that the driver is intoxicated but chemical tests show that he is not, then also the death is nevertheless reported as "alcohol-related". In fact, if it is indicated by the tests that there has been a presence of any alcohol at all, say .02%, the police officer will chalk up the fatality as "alcohol-related".
In 1999, these figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been reviewed by the federal General Accounting Office (GAO) and then they issued a report which states that they raised methodological concerns calling their conclusions into question. The statistics, as said by the GAO report fall short of providing conclusive evidence that .08% BAC laws were, by themselves, responsible for reductions in alcohol related fatalities. Explaining this in other words, the statistics were not even valid when they were applied to alcohol-related fatalities, much less alcohol-caused deaths.
So what are the real numbers? It was also decided by the Los Angeles Times to investigate the validity of these statistics. In 2002, it has been claimed by the NHTSA’s figures that 18,000 deaths on the nation’s highways attributable to drunk driving. It has been searched out by the “Times” that only about 5,000 of these involved a drunk driver that caused the death of a sober driver, passenger or pedestrian. Research that has been conducted by other groups, such as "Responsibility in DUI Laws, Inc.", indicated that the figure is actually under 3,000. A fraction of the number that is being used by political pressure groups like MADD and the government.
Despite this irritating little truth, the same false statistics is continuously being used by MADD, law enforcement and federal and state governments in order to justify the passage of unfair and unconstitutional DUI laws.
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