Drinking and DrivingImagine being at a bar with some of your good friends. Everyone is drinking and having a good time. You're going to leave and go home, but your friends won't let you because they know the dangers of driving after having a few drinks. Instead, they call a taxi to take you home. You would be extremely lucky to have such intelligent friends. Drunk driving is a very serious problem in our society today, but it is becoming socially unacceptable, leading to a considerable drop in the number of alcohol-related road deaths. Drunk driving can be very deadly. Yet many people drive under the influence every day. Drunk drivers are blamed for the loss of twenty-five thousand lives in traffic accidents each year and hundreds of thousands of serious injuries. Drunk drivers are believed to have a long history of driving like this and numerous prior arrests. Furthermore, most of those killed are innocent victims whose behavior did not contribute to their deaths. These last two statements are both false. On average, a drunk driver who kills has never been involved in an alcohol-related accident before and has never been convicted of drunk driving. The part that those killed are just innocent militants is also exaggerated. Most of the victims of drunk drivers are the drivers themselves, their passengers, as well as drunk pedestrians and cyclists. Despite this, drunk driving remains very dangerous. It is now the leading cause of death from unintentional injuries in the United States. In fact, it is estimated that approximately 40% of the population will be involved in an alcohol-related accident in their lifetime. Drunk driving is particularly dangerous for young people, who seem more involved than others. Drinking and driving is the leading cause of death among young people, accounting for 20% of all deaths between the ages of 15 and 20. Drinking and driving, however, is a very difficult thing to overcome. In our society, alcohol is widely accepted as a facilitator of social interactions, and the vast majority of adults drink it. But measures are being taken and the number of deaths is falling. Alcohol-related traffic deaths have decreased recently. As a proportion of all traffic fatalities, it has declined since 1982. In fact, since 1982, the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities has decreased by 30%, from 25,165 to 17,699, while alcohol-related road deaths as a proportion of all road deaths. , decreased by 57% to 45%.