Drinking While Driving and Fatal Car Crashes
Before the mid-1990s, the odds of an underage drinker involved in a fatal car crash were heavily stacked against young males at any blood alcohol level. New statistics reveal that since 1996, the gender gap has almost closed.
There are two new realities revealed in the statistics. First, fatal accidents among underage male drunk drivers are still greater. Second, underage female drunk drivers at any given blood alcohol level run the same risk of fatal car crashes as their male counterparts. What does this mean? There are still more young men driving drunk than underage females, but at any blood alcohol level, underage females are “behaving like young men who drink and drive”.
The statistics are drawn from the government’s tracking system for fatal traffic accidents. Regardless of age, as blood alcohol levels rose so did the risk of a fatal car crash. Both underage female and male drunk drivers with blood alcohol levels of 0.2- 0.49 were three times more likely to be in a fatal car crash. The odds of dying in a single-vehicle crash were four times greater. Consequences from drinking and driving are affecting both genders more equally today.
(Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/243734.php
