Drunken Driving - Iowa Judge, police officer and others involved with OWI

It’s reported that a former associate judge in Muscatine County, Iowa was ordered to serve five years in prison for his third OWI offense.  He was fined $3,125 and will serve his time at Davenport’s work release center. His BAC was more than twice the limit.

Meanwhile a Burlington, Iowa man was sentenced to 5-years of probation for being the driver of a car that crashed killing the passenger. His BAC was more than twice the limit.

A Waterloo, Iowa police officer was arrested on a drunken driver charge after the Black Hawk County sheriff’s deputies responded to a car in the ditch. No breath or field sobriety test results were available. No indication in the available news stories that anyone was injured.

Coralville, Iowa police charged a Chicago man driving a U-Haul truck was stopped on I-80 with blood-alcohol content at 0.184, more than twice the legal limit. Children were in the vehicle and as reported charges of child endangerment are pending.

Driving drunk or under the influence has serious consequences as we’ve seen this past week with the Taconic Highway wrong-way driving accidents that I’ve been reporting on.

MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving have MADD statistics on their website including the link to the NHTSA’s statistics for 2007 Traffic Safety Annual Assessment – Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities.

Summary

In 2007, an estimated 12,998 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. – a decline of 3.7 percent from the 13,491 fatalities in 2006.

The fatality rate, per 100 million vehicle miles of travel (VMT), decreased to 0.43 – the lowest on record.

Thirty-two States had decreases in the number of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in 2007, as compared to 2006.

Twenty-five States and the District of Columbia had increases in the number of alcohol-impaired motor-cycle riders (operators).

Alcohol-impaired motorcycle riders increased by 10 percent in 2007

Since 1982 there has been a steady decline in the number of deaths per vehicle miles traveled. The death rate has gone from a high of just over 1.20 to a low of about 0.50. That’s a good thing. We are moving in the right direction.