Broward Injury Lawyer Blog
New Year’s Day is all about the celebration of new beginnings. Unfortunately, it’s one that is all too often associated with tragic endings, at least on the roads. 
An analysis released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reveals Jan. 1st is the single deadliest day of the year when it comes to alcohol-related crashes involving motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. The IIHS late last year looked at the most recent five years of deadly crash information, and discovered that on that day, an average of 70 people were killed in collisions where at least one driver, pedestrian or cyclist had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 or higher. In fact, 62 percent of all deadly crashes in the U.S. on that day were attributed to impairment by alcohol, which is almost double the overall rate of 35 percent.
In just looking at occupants of motor vehicles (excluding large trucks), an average of 83 people were killed in car accidents on New Year’s Day over that five-year time frame, compared to an average of 59 on any other given day.
It especially doesn’t bode well this year that overall traffic deaths have spiked, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports the number of alcohol-impaired driving crashes in rose nearly 2 percent between 2015 and 2016. Nearly 10,500 people died in drunk driving accidents last year. Continue reading
