Alcohol-Linked Traffic Deaths Drop 5% in State
Alcohol-related traffic fatalities declined 5.16% in California last year, the CHP reported.
That is on top of a 14.4% plunge, the largest annual percentage drop ever, between 1992 and 1993, reports from the California Highway Patrol and Department of Motor Vehicles say, and continues a trend that began in the late 1980s.
The CHP reported 1,488 alcohol-related traffic fatalities in 1994, down from 1,569 in 1993 and 1,832 in 1992. That marks a 46% decrease since such deaths reached a high of 2,754 in 1987.
The CHP report also revealed that alcohol-related deaths declined as a percentage of all traffic fatalities from 37.7% in 1993 to 35.3% in 1994. That compares with 52.2% in 1983.
The DMV, in its report, cited a decline in drunk-driving arrests, from 260,150 in 1992 to 233,673 in 1993. Ten years earlier, there were 353,079 drunk-driving arrests statewide.
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