Alcohol-Related Traffic Deaths Slowly Decline

First the good news: Stricter laws, education campaigns and eroding public tolerance for drunk drivers are credited with helping reduce both the highway fatality rate and the percentage of crashes involving alcohol.

The number of U.S. highway deaths last year declined 2.3% from 1989, making the 1990 rate of fatalities per miles traveled the lowest ever recorded, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.

Alcohol was involved in 49.6% of the 1990 fatalities, down from 57.2% in 1982, the agency said.

But now the bad news: An awful lot of people still are dying in alcohol-related crashes.

* Drinking and driving last year killed an estimated 22,084 people and injured 355,000 more, the safety agency said.

* Traffic crashes remain the greatest single cause of death for Americans age 5 to 32, and nearly half the crashes in that age bracket involve alcohol, the agency said.

* About two of every five Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash sometime in their lives, the agency said.

* Forty-two percent of Americans polled by the Gallup Organization earlier this year said they personally knew someone who had been killed or injured by a drunk driver. Fourteen percent said they had driven while they were over or near the legal limit of intoxication during the previous three months.