Alcohol Awareness Month

By Member T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, PhD, MPH

April is Alcohol Awareness Month. First introduced in 1987 by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc., this time is set aside to increase public awareness for alcohol-related issues and to encourage communities to focus on ways to address this public health problem. In 2016, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 10,497 people across the United States were killed by drivers with blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) of .08 g/dL or higher. That means that every 50 minutes, a person is killed in an alcohol-impaired crash in the United States.

Impaired Driving Preventable At the NTSB, we find this tragic and unacceptable, because every one of these crashes is preventable.

Next week, the Lifesavers National Conference on Highway Safety Priorities will take place in San Antonio, Texas. More than 2,000 highway safety professionals from across the United States will gather to meet, learn, and share their proven-effective programs to increase the safety of America’s roadways, including implementing impaired driving prevention programs, improving enforcement strategies, and encouraging legislative changes. I’m especially excited to be attending the conference this year, not only because it’s being hosted in my home state, but also because I will be speaking on a panel focused on lowering the illegal BAC from .08 to .05 percent in states across our nation. A take-home message that I hope all Lifesavers attendees will remember is that a .05 BAC is a broad prevention strategy which deters even drivers with high BACs from getting behind the wheel.

Reducing drinking and driving deaths takes a comprehensive approach, and lowering the illegal BAC limit is just one part of the impaired-driving-prevention equation. Other important solutions can be found below, through our past blogs, safety recommendations, and efforts to address alcohol-impaired driving. With one-third of all traffic fatalities related to impaired driving, and more than 10,000 American lives lost every year, our work is far from over.

We have accomplished a great deal when it comes to reducing alcohol-impaired driving, ChooseOne but there is much more to be done to save lives and prevent injuries. The way I see it, the solution—this month and every month—is simple: if we separate drinking from driving, we will save lives.