Colorado Car Accident Attorneys

Colorado Car Accident Information

The United States witnesses more car fatalities than any other high-income country. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows a 7.7 percent increase in road deaths in 2015, jumping from 32,600 to 35,200, which is roughly 90 victims a day. [1]

Fortunately for drivers and pedestrians across the country, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was able to report that even with an increase in fatalities, highway fatalities have dropped after 2005 and remain at historic lows. But there’s still more to be done to make Colorado roadways safer for everyone.

Colorado Car Crash Statistics

Anyone who has been injured in a Colorado car wreck or has lost a loved one because of an auto accident knows that life can change in the blink of an eye. Yet, far too many accidents occur every year. In fact, hundreds of people die on Colorado roads each year and the lives of thousands more are irreversibly changed because of a serious car accident.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how good of a driver you may be, you may not be able to avoid the careless driving habits of others. You may not have even been in a vehicle when you were hit by a negligent driver. Too many times pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists are killed by drivers who aren’t paying attention.

According to the Institute, statistics show that in 2015, Colorado auto accidents claimed the lives of:

• 103 motorists
• 59 pedestrians
• 13 bicyclists

Car wrecks in Colorado also claimed the lives of:

• 175 people in passenger cars
• 165 people in pickup trucks and SUVs
• 13 people in large trucks [2]

Drunk and Drunk Driving

It is illegal to drive a motor vehicle if your ability to operate the vehicle is impaired due to the use of alcohol. The legal threshold, the point at which you are deemed to be impaired whether you feel or appear intoxicated, is a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) level of 0.08. Some drivers, like underage and commercial drivers, are held to an even lower standard and can be arrested for driving with a BAC of 0.02.

Yet, despite these thresholds, drunk drivers continue to be responsible for thousands of deaths across the United States. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that one person died nearly every 52 minutes in alcohol related crashes in 2013. More than 10,000 people died that year in car crashes involving a driver with a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher.

Of these alcohol-related fatalities:

• 6,860 involved a driver with a BAC of .15 or more
• 1567 were passengers of drunk drivers
• 1157 were passengers in other vehicles
• 837 of these people were not in a vehicle when they were killed [3]

Colorado’s Drunk Driving Record

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CODOT) reports that over 26,000 people are arrested each year for driving with a BAC over the legal threshold. [4] What is worse is that these drivers are responsible for the deaths of more than one-third of all Colorado car accident fatalities.

Colorado’s drugged driving statistics may not be as bad as some news reports would have it seem, but they aren’t as good as you might hope. The CODOT reports that 87 fatal accidents in 2012 involved a drugged driver, and of the 286 drivers who were tested for drugs that year, 35 had cannabis in their system.

Like the legal threshold for alcohol, Colorado has established a legal threshold of 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood as the legal limit for marijuana impairment when driving. This means you can be arrested for drugged driving if you have five nanograms of active THC in your blood, even if you do not feel or seem under the influence. [5]