The holiday season is a time for celebrating, exchanging gifts with loved ones and welcoming the promise of a new year. It’s a time when many of us imbibe (to the tune of 360 million glasses of wine and an average blood alcohol content of .094 on New Year’s Eve), which is perfectly fine. It becomes a problem when we decide to get behind the wheel and drive after all the celebrations.
The state of Louisiana saw 341 injuries from car accidents because of the New Year’s festivities in 2015. That was on a weekday. When we ushered in 2017, the holiday fell on a weekend. We don’t have the numbers yet, but the last time we celebrated the New Year on a weekend there were 516 injuries and 12 deaths from car accidents. The numbers were released by the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission as a part of their participation in the federal program, Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving, an initiative to warn people about the dangers of driving impaired.
Last year in Louisiana 752 people lost their lives in car accidents, and 41 percent of them were the result of impaired driving. In 2015, drunk driving accounted for 10,265 deaths nationwide.
Sadly, the families of the victims are left to pick up the pieces, dealing with not just the emotional pain, but also the burden of medical expenses, lost wages and funeral costs. If you’ve lost a loved one in a drunk driving accident, speaking with an attorney could be the first step toward getting compensation.
Source: thenewsstar.com, “History shows holiday weekend can result in more crashes,” December 30, 2016
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