This actually happened this past week in my hometown…
2 women are driving early on New Year’s morning after a night of heavy partying. Both women are drunk. On the ride home, they rear-end another car (stopped), killing the driver instantly.
The victim was an up and coming professional as well as a anti-drunk driving activist.
After all the legalities are taken care of, (presumably a medical checkup and possibly a quick bail hearing), one of the two drunken drivers (the passenger) returns home to find the police waiting for her at her doorstep. The police then inform her that her son had stolen a car earlier in the evening, got in a high speed accident and was killed instantly.
The kid was drunk at the time of the accident.
Here’s another C&P from the bottom of the linked newspaper article:
What this means is just what is says. The Chicago Reader, being a publisher themselves takes a dim view of copyright infringements. Please do not post copyrighted works in their entirety on this message board. Small fragments and URLs (whether they expire or not) are acceptable. Large portions and reposting wholly is not permitted. Please do not do this again, NoGoodNamesLeft.
I’ve heard that a) they don’t always fare so well and b) because the drunk driver is usually in the faster-moving vehicle.
Some more physics-oriented dopers will need to come along and verify this, but the possibly erroneous theory follows the idea that when two cars collide, the faster one sustains less damage. The theory does seem a little weird to me because I think it would also really depend on the make and model of car – e.g. the tinker toy I’m driving now would be totalled if a bicycle hit me, let alone an SUV, whereas my old Dodge Shadow got t-boned by a pick-up truck and kept my mom safe and sound.
Er, I dont know if this is 100% accurate, but I remember my Mum telling me once why drunk drivers tend to have a higher survival rate…
As a sober driver sees an imminent crash, or feels the start of an impact, they tense up their body in shock, much like you do when you’re frightened or startled by something. The drunk driver, on the other hand, has an impared reaction rate, and will not tense up in time for the crash. The now ‘rigid’ sober driver will experience far more damage as they crash (due to them being in a fixed position, and decellerating in a short period of time). The still-floppy drunk driver will roll and move as the car crashes, tending to go with the flow of the crash, and decellerating in a longer period of time, meaning they’ll experience less damage.
Hmmm, dont know if this is the proper explaination, but Mum knows best usually…