The risk of a teen being involved in a DUI arrest or even worse an alcohol-related car accident is not the only reason why you should be concerned about your child’s alcohol practices. A new study finds that there are a number of other ways that teenagers are killed every year when they engage in unhealthy alcohol-related behaviors, and drunk driving accidents account for just a small proportion of these.
According to the study, there are about 4,700 underage drinking-related fatalities in the United States every year. However, contrary to what safety groups and parents might believe, DUI forms a very small percentage of these. In fact, less than one third of all underage alcohol--related fatalities are the result of a DUI accident.
The study was based on data derived from the federal administration’s
data from 2010, and the researchers found that 32% of underage drinking
fatalities involved people between the age of 15 and 20 in alcohol-related
car accidents. The remaining were linked to a number of other causes including
alcohol poisoning, murder, suicide and other causes.
For instance, murder accounted for approximately 30% of all the remaining
non-DUI-related fatalities every year from alcohol, while suicide accounted
for 40% of all fatalities and alcohol poisoning accounted for 9% of all
fatalities. The remaining 15% of fatalities occurred from other causes.
What this study does make clear to Los Angeles DUI lawyers, is that parents must take the risks of alcohol use involving their children, and the various ways that their children's lives can be ruined by alcohol use, very clear to their teens. This kind of input from parents is especially important when the teen is about to leave home to go to college. Studies show that the first year of college is extremely important in determining the kind of alcohol-related practices that the teen adopts.
