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Utah has lowest percentage nationally for drunk driving fatalities

Posted at 11:58 AM, Dec 19, 2019
and last updated 2020-06-09 12:52:33-04

SALT LAKE CITY – Utah has the lowest percentage of traffic fatalities that are related to drunk driving, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

MADD says Utah has 52 drunk driving deaths annually.

This puts Utah at No. 1 in the category, improving from No. 3 in 2016.

There is still a lot of work to be done in Utah, MADD says.

MADD is giving Utah only three out of five stars for preventing drunk driving deaths.

The advocacy group seeks for states like Utah to make even more improvements to prevent drunk driving.

MADD promotes breathalyzers installed in the cars of convicted drunk drivers. The group also favors driver’s license revocation laws.

In the United States, drunk driving fatalities are near a historic low.

In 1982 there were 21,113 drunk driving fatalities, the first year the National Highway Safety Administration began collecting these numbers. In 2017, there were 10,876 of these deaths. The lowest year during this period was in 2011, when there was 9,865 drunk driving fatalities.