Yes, that's a very scary statistic. Not suprisingly, the data cited by the CDC in this publication reveals that of the nearly 120,000 reported pedestrian injuries for the year 2007, 36% of the pedestrians killed in these accidents were legally drunk.
You might think that's not such a signficant number. But you'd be terribly wrong: Nearly 5,000 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes across the country in 2007.
Here are some other highlights of the study:
- The highest incidence of pedestrian-related injuries involved pre-teens and teens;
- The risk of a pedestrian dying from a motor vehicle crash generally increases with age.
- Other than the elderly, those at the greatest risk for significant injury in a car crash are children because 1) their small size makes them harder for drivers to see; 2) children have greater difficulty judging accurately the speed and distances of passing vehicles.
Here's one final statistic that's worthy of mention: more children between the ages 5 and 14 have been killed as the result of car accidents than any other cause.
