Young Drivers and Drinking--a Deadly Mixture on the Road

It’s the wee hours and the young driver has been drinking. The car goes out of control, smashes into a telephone pole and the young driver is killed.

The ingredients of this accident--a young person (age 16 to 24), drinking and driving--were the single most deadly mixture on the nation’s highways last year, the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says.

With variations on the theme (the car could have hit another vehicle, a bridge abutment, gone over an embankment, etc.), accidents involving young drunk drivers claimed 7,784 lives in 1983, a study by the institute shows.

That means young people caused 40% of the nation’s drunk-driving fatalities last year, far more than any other age group. The study also shows that there are certain months, days, hours and holidays when young drunken drivers are especially deadly.

Pattern Evolves

The study compiled by the institute’s Fatal Accident Reporting System indicates that there was a distinct pattern in 1983 involving young drunk drivers, a pattern that probably has existed for many years.

January had the fewest fatalities, and the number of deaths rose steadily month by month through February, March, April and May, dipped slightly in June, then peaked in July and August. The number of fatal accidents declined during the last three months of the year. Thus, the pattern generally follows a pattern of the warmer the month, the more deaths young drunk drivers cause.

Not surprisingly, two-thirds of the young drunk drivers’ carnage occurred on weekends, with Saturday being the deadliest day, Sunday (particularly the early hours of Sunday morning) the second worst day, and Friday third on the list.

Tuesday saw the fewest number of accidents followed by Wednesday, Monday and Thursday.

The worst hours to be on the highway with young drivers, the study showed, are between midnight and 4 a.m. These hours were the deadliest for Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. The second most dangerous time to be on the road is 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., the most frequent time of the young’s alcohol-caused deaths on Monday and Friday.

Holidays during the warmer months were inordinately dangerous, the study indicated, with Labor Day the worst (168 mishaps caused by young drunk drivers). The Fourth of July was almost as bad (150 deaths), and Memorial Day third (133).