According to the latest available data, police arrested 1,024,508 people for driving under the influence in the U.S. in 2019. Not all states distinguish a DWI and DUI, like in Texas, so these statistics represent all individuals arrested for driving unsafely due to intoxication.
At a state level, 64,161 adults aged 18 or over were arrested for driving under the influence in Texas. What’s potentially more alarming, though, is that the average person drunk-drives more than 80 times before their first arrest. Not all instances of driving while intoxicated result in an accident, but as these statistics show, it’s only a matter of time — and it will likely be deadly.
Drunk Driving Accidents in San Antonio
San Antonio is Texas’s second-largest city, so it naturally follows that it has one of the state’s highest occurrences of drunk driving accidents. In 2018, San Antonio was the site of 1,839 drunk driving crashes, resulting in 43 fatalities and 92 serious injuries. The only city with more DUI vehicle accidents was Houston.
2019 showed a similar trend, with 1,871 total crashes recorded.
Alcohol-related car crashes in the United States total more than $44 billion in costs annually, with 28 people dying every day from drunk driving collisions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Children are affected, too. An alcohol-impaired driver was involved in 17 percent of 1,233 traffic deaths among children aged 0 to 14 in just one year.
These DUI crash statistics are significant because they reflect the prevalence of drunk driving in our community and its severe consequences.