The Impact of Drunk Driving in New Jersey
If you can take a bird’s eye view of the situation, you can see how a lenient response, or one that appears lenient, to a dangerous or forbidden action can deter people from engaging in it as much as draconian punishments can. Consider that Prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s did not usher in a generation of teetotalers. If anything, it made drinking alcohol even more appealing. With one drink, you could get a buzz from the notoriety as well as from the alcohol. Organized crime networks sprang up around the traffic in illegally produced alcoholic beverages. The louder you shout about how forbidden something is, the more tempted people are to seek it out. New Jersey’s drunk driving laws are plenty punitive, but you do not get a criminal record simply for driving drunk; you just have to pay thousands of dollars in monetary fines and comply with other requirements. New Jersey drivers only get criminal penalties for DUI if they injure someone while driving drunk. It all worked well for a while, but now New Jersey’s traffic fatality rate is increasing, and many of the fatal accidents involve alcohol. If you have been injured by a drunk driver, contact a South Jersey auto accident lawyer.
Drunk Driving Has Propelled an Increase in Traffic Fatalities
In 2024, 643 people died in car accidents in New Jersey. This is a sharp increase from the number of traffic fatalities in 2023. It is also higher than the number of traffic fatalities from 2022, which was higher than the 2023 number. In fact, 2024 had more motor vehicle-related deaths than any other year in recent memory.
A substantial number of these fatal accidents are attributable to alcohol. Nationwide, alcohol is a factor in about one third of fatal traffic collisions. Laws against drunk driving are one of the reasons that, ever since these laws went into effect, the rate of traffic fatalities has never been as high as it was in the 1970s and before. Another reason is that, since the 1980s, seatbelts have been a standard feature of all commercially produced cars.
The Victims of Drunk Driving in New Jersey
Occupants of motor vehicles are only some of the victims of drunk driving accidents. Of the 643 people killed by drunk drivers in New Jersey in 2024, 25 were bicyclists and 207 were pedestrians. In other words, approximately one third of the people killed in DUI accidents in New Jersey last year were not in cars. Beyond this, single vehicle accidents account for a substantial portion of DUI fatalities. If you get injured in a DUI accident, you have the right to file a dram shop liability claim if a bar served an excessive amount of alcohol to the at fault driver before he or she drove and caused the accident.
Contact Monaco Law PC About Drunk Driving Accidents
Contact Monaco Law PC in Marlton, New Jersey to discuss your drunk driving accident case. Joseph Monaco is a New Jersey and Pennsylvania personal injury lawyer serving Atlantic County, Burlington County, Cape May County, Camden County, Cumberland County, Gloucester County, Mercer County, Middlesex County, Ocean County, Salem County and all of South Jersey.
Source:
cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-jersey-deadly-crashes-drunk-driving/
