Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
Call it the “Sex and the City” syndrome. California is seeing a surge in young women driving drunk. Guys are still kings of drinking and driving. But DUI crashes are up more than 100 percent this decade among women ages 21 to 24, the most of any age group, according to an analysis by AAA researcher Steve Bloch.
at a state Office of Traffic Safety conference, Bloch tweaked trend-setting Hollywood for being the seeming epicenter. Among the young and the restless: Lindsay Lohan (twice), Paris Hilton (it was just one margarita!), Nicole Richie (wielding a black Mercedes) and Khloe Kardashian (“She’s a superstar,” her attorney said, apropos of nothing). “There seems to be a competition in Hollywood to be the first to be arrested for DUI,” Bloch joked.
But the trend is worrisome, he said. We need to know what’s behind it.
The California Highway Patrol’s Adrian Quintero was taken aback by Bloch’s findings. In teen programs, CHP officers often tell girls to take the keys from boys. “We need to change our focus,” Quintero said. “We need to get this information out.”
“If women go out drinking as a group, it’s not that women are drinking more but that women are in the driver’s seat when the car is pulled over,” de la Peña said. Lisa Couch, 25, of Sacramento and her friends do girls night out twice a month.
One friend got a DUI. It wasn’t the wake-up call it should have been, Couch said. There’s usually a designated driver. But that person doesn’t always abstain. Sometimes, “you have a drink with everybody, then it’s two drinks. Then you go, ‘uh-oh!’ ”
Police may be citing more young women, rather then letting them off with a warning. The CHP, for the record, says they’ve never treated women differently on DUI stops.
By age 30, Bloch says, drunken driving citations level out. People that age may have learned a not-so-fun fact: A drunken driving conviction in California can cost up to $10,000.
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.