On Thursday, May 8th from 12:30 to 2:00, we will host Choices Matter for a presentation to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. In partnership with highway safety offices across the country, Choices Matter is a life-changing program for students using personal stories and interactive materials to inspire students to make the right choices both behind the wheel and in life.  Choices Matter provides a critical component of education for our students! Please click here to read more.

Fact Sheet

• Each day, people drive drunk more than 300,000 times, but only about 3,200 are arrested.

• More than 75% of 12

  ^th

  graders and 66% of all 10

  ^th

  graders drink alcohol.

• Text messaging while driving makes a crash up to 23 times more likely.

• In 2018, 20.5 million people aged 16 or older drove under the influence of alcohol in the past year and 12.6 million drove under the influence of illicit drugs.

• Almost half of all drivers who were killed in a crash and tested positive for drugs also had alcohol in their system.

• 45% of teen drivers who died in 2019 were unbuckled.

• About one-third of all drivers arrested or convicted of drunk driving are repeat offenders.

• Over 1.1 million drivers were arrested in 2016 for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics.

• In 2020, speeding was the cause of 11,258 fatalities in the United States.

• At any given daylight moment across America, approximately 481,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving.

• Men are more likely than women to be driving drunk in fatal crashes. In 2018, 21% of men were drunk in these crashes, compared to 14% of women.

• Students are about seventy times more likely to get to school safely when taking a school bus instead of traveling by car.

• In 2020, 11,654 people died in drunk driving crashes.

• Kids who start drinking young are seven times more likely to be in an alcohol-related crash.

• In 2020, 3,142 people were killed by a distracted driver.

• Nearly one in five crashes in which someone is injured involve a distracted driver.

• An average drunk driver has driven drunk over 80 times before their first arrest.

• Car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens, and about a quarter of those crashes involve an underage drinking driver.

• In 2020, 53% of speeding drivers in fatal crashes were also not wearing their seatbelts.

• High school students who use alcohol or other substances are five times more likely to drop out of school.

• Five seconds is the average time your eyes are off the road while texting. When traveling at 55 mph, that’s enough time to cover the length of a football field blindfolded.

• Every two minutes, a person is injured in a drunk driving crash.

• By age 18, about 58% percent of teens have had at least 1 drink. (2018)

• On average, alcohol is a factor in the deaths of 3,900 young people under age 21 each year.

• Approximately every 30 seconds, there is a crash in the United State involving drivers using cell phones or texting.

• Research shows that people who start drinking before the age of 15 are 4 times more likely to meet the criteria for alcohol dependence at some point in their lives.