The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently released this report on fatal motor vehicle crashes in 2018. The number of traffic fatalities nationwide decreased modestly last year as did the number of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities. In North Carolina, the number of fatalities in both categories modestly increased in 2018. In the aggregate, neither the national nor the state numbers reflect much change in the fatality rate associated with traffic crashes generally or impaired driving-related crashes specifically. While there were precipitous declines in alcohol-impaired driving fatalities from 1982 to 2000, since that time the number of impaired driving-related fatalities has remained rather constant. A similar plateau exists for all types of traffic fatalities, for which the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled has remained relatively static for the last decade. This flat trend line has safety advocates wondering what they can do, particularly in the impaired driving context, to push the trend line toward zero. The numbers. There were 36,560 people killed in traffic crashes in the United States in 2018, a 2.4 percent decrease from 2017. Twenty nine percent of those deaths (10,511) were alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities, a 3.6 percent decrease from 2017. In North Carolina, 1,437 people died in traffic crashes in 2018, a 1.8 percent increase from 2017. Twenty nine percent of those deaths were alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities, a 5 percent increase from 2017. Wondering just how impaired drivers involved in fatality crashes are? A 2014 NHTSA report stated that among the 10,076 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities the previous year, [...]
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