044 DUI: Driving Under the Influence

Although drunk driving incidences have reportedly declined by half over the last thirty years, drunk driving remains a serious problem in Maryland and in the United States. The most effective way to comprehend the nation's lingering drunk driving problem is to acknowledge some of the sobering statistics: In 2015, nearly one-third of all traffic related deaths in the United States involved a drunk driver in 2015. On average, one person in America dies every 51 minutes in a drunk driving crash. Approximately 800 people are injured each day in a drunk driving accident, about one person every two minutes. Two-thirds of people are involved in a drunk driving collision at some point in their lifetimes. In October of 2016, the Maryland General Assembly passed "Noah's Law," named after a Montgomery County police officer who was killed by a drunk driver during a traffic stop. With the passage of this legislation, enforcing stricter drunk driving penalties including usage of an ignition interlock device, Maryland's drunk driving laws are among the toughest in the United States. Still, the statistics show that Maryland's rates of injury and death in drunk driving incidences continues to hover around the national average.