Are Fatal Drunk Driving Accidents Common In New Jersey?

Drunk driving accidents in New Jersey can be very serious. When it comes to fatal drunk driving crashes, New Jersey has rates of death that are much lower than the national average. While this is good news for the state as a whole, it does very little to comfort the family members of the victims in these fatal drunk driving crashes. The family members of people who are killed by drunk drivers might choose to seek compensation for their loss.

For the purpose of the statistics, only accidents that involved a person who was legally intoxicated with a blood alcohol concentration percentage of .08 or higher were considered. From 2003 through 2012, 1,816 people were killed in drunk driving accidents in our state.

Males were the gender with the higher rate of death for drunk driving accidents. Considering the number of deaths per 100,000 people in the population, males had a death rate of 2.9 people and females had a death rate of .9, which is less than one person. Those figures are well below the national death rate of 5.2 for males and 1.5 for females.

All told, the state has a death rate of 1.8 people per 100,000 people in the population. That is remarkably lower than the 3.3 people death rate nationally.

The highest death rate in our state was that of people who are from 21 years old through 34 years old. In that age range, the death rate is a harrowing 4.6 people per 100,000. Even that staggering figure is lower than the national death rate for that age group, which is 6.7 people.

Source: United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Sobering Facts: Drunk Driving in New Jersey,” accessed July 21, 2016