Alcohol-Related Car Accident Deaths on the Decline in Massachusetts

It’s all over your TV, computer, phone and any other screen you use: Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over.

In recent years, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has used this and other campaigns to capture attention of future possible drunk drivers, and to convince them not to make that decision.

And the campaigns seem to be working. A recently released study from the NHTSA shows a 2.5 percent decline in the amount of deaths from alcohol-related car accidents nationally. With the exception of 2012, numbers have been steadily declining for seven years.

In Massachusetts, police saw a 15 percent reduction in traffic fatalities overall and an 8.5 percent decline in alcohol-related traffic deaths.

But that number still represents 118 people who died in 2013.

“We can never claim victory while in the same breath acknowledging the preventable and needless loss of life,” Massachusetts State Police wrote in their blog.

For this reason, police say they’ll continue to be committed to reducing the number of traffic deaths due to alcohol.

“Through alcohol education, public messaging, increased vehicle safety standards and multi-faceted law enforcement strategies we can do even better and in doing so save more lives,” MSP wrote in the blog.

Image via Shutterstock
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