No matter what happens to the economy, people will always come to New Orleans to get drunk. Whether they arrive in stretch limousines or jalopies, whether they fly first class or Southwest, the tourists keep arriving, the ones who have gotten drunk in all 50 states and the ones who are teetotal in the other 49. The locals enjoy their strong drink, too, whether they drink cheap beer before getting behind the wheel of their pickup trucks or get smashed on absinthe before going out for a spin on their tandem bicycles. By this logic, you would think that Louisiana would have more drunk driving accidents than anywhere else in the United States. While Louisiana consistently ranks in the top 10 by some metrics associated with drunk driving, it otherwise appears surprisingly average. Of course, statistics don’t matter when you are struggling with medical bills arising from injuries you sustained in a drunk driving accident, even if the drunk driver was you. If you were injured in a car accident where alcohol intoxication was a contributing factor, contact a Houma car accident lawyer.
In Louisiana, alcohol plays a role in 29% of fatal traffic collisions. That puts it near the middle. The state with the lowest rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities is the famously dry Utah, while the ones with the highest rates are Texas, where everything is bigger, even alcoholic beverages, and South Carolina, the land of destination weddings, where lonely bridesmaids drown their sorrows. In those states, 42% and 43%, respectively, of fatal traffic accidents involve alcohol.
When you consider all accidents that involve alcohol, not just the ones that lead to fatalities, Louisiana looks worse. It ranks seventh highest in the country; it has consistently ranked in the top ten for this metric for many years.
The scariest thing about drunk driving is that it endangers everyone; you can get hurt or die if a drunk driver hits you while you are driving cautiously, or even while you are walking. More than half of the people killed in alcohol-related traffic accidents are the impaired drivers themselves; they account for three out of every five DWI-related fatalities. The second largest group is passengers riding with drunk drivers, followed by occupants of other vehicles, and then non-occupants of motor vehicles, including pedestrians and bicyclists. Pursuant to Louisiana’s dram shop liability laws, anyone who gets hurt in a car accident caused by someone who got drunk at a bar just before driving has the right to file a premises liability against the bar that sold alcohol to the drunk driver; this includes the driver who caused the accident after drinking at the bar.
A personal injury lawyer can help you get the money you need after an accident caused by a drunk driver. Contact the Law Office of Patrick H. Yancey in Houma, Louisiana, to set up a consultation about your case.
Fuentes
https://tulanehullabaloo.com/69172/data/drunk-driving-fatalities-increase-louisiana-among-highest/
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