The number of car crashes and fatal traffic accidents involving alcohol or drugs in Michigan declined from 2006 to 2007, showing a 10-year low for the state, according to the Michigan State Police Drunk Driving Audit.
The audit shows 5,207 alcohol or drug-related traffic accidents, injury crashes and impaired driving arrests in 2007 compared to 5,455 in 2006 — a 4.5 percent decrease.
State Police Lt. Gary Megge said different components that alert the community may have helped contribute to the lower number of crashes and deaths.
“We would like to think it’s a combination of things,” Megge said. “Commercials and public service announcements, and literature that various agencies put out are affecting the way society feels about drunk driving.”
Fatalities resulting from alcohol- or drug-related crashes dropped 13 percent, with 382 in 2007 from 440 in 2006.
Young men continue to be most targeted for drunken driving advertising campaigns, according to the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning. Megge said this could be because young men tend to live more dangerously.
“I’ve seen a lot of studies where young men tend to be risk-takers,” Megge said. “They take more risks than females or older folks.”
John Ruggero, a first-year osteopathic medicine student, said there is not just one type of individual who tends to drive drunk.
“It depends on the person,” Ruggero said.
A person’s surroundings also can influence them to drink and drive, Ruggero said.
“When they’re in a college atmosphere, it could lead someone to make those kinds of decisions,” he said.
Megge said people’s opinion on drunken driving has changed in the last decade, making what was once only slightly frowned upon into a social taboo.
“People don’t want to see people drive when they’re drinking,” he said. “It’s no longer funny or acceptable.”
In 2007, 49,867 alcohol- and drug-related driving arrests were made, a decrease of nearly 3,500 from 2006. Of those arrests, 47,267 resulted in convictions of operating while intoxicated or impaired driving, according to the MOHSP.
Spartans Against Drunk Driving advertising coordinator Lindsay Gluf said that although the state is at a 10-year low, more work still needs to be done to keep up awareness about the dangers of driving drunk.
“Everyone’s efforts in the matter are definitely helping,” said Gluf, an interdisciplinary studies in social science and human resources and society senior. “But awareness needs to be continuous for everybody.”
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