In recent decades, according to a recent study published in Pediatrics, one in five child passenger deaths in the U.S. involved a drinking driver. The study found that nearly two-thirds of the children killed in those crashes were riding with the impaired driver.
Researchers found that 2,344 children younger than 15 were killed in crashes involving at least one impaired driver. Of these, 1,515 (65%) were riding with the impaired driver.
The study found that 71% of impaired drivers survived the crash in which a child passenger died.
And, while the annual number of children killed in such crashes dropped by 41% between 2001 and 2010, the proportion of child passengers killed while riding in the same car as an alcohol-impaired driver remained relatively stable, because the total number of child passenger deaths declined at about the same rate. The actual number of total child passenger deaths declined by 44%, from 1,504 in 2001 to 837 in 2010.
Texas was the state with the most children killed while riding with an impaired driver (272); South Dakota had the highest rate of child passenger deaths (.98%). Connecticut was one of 13 states in which fewer than 10 children died while riding with an impaired driver in the decade the researchers studied.
