Five Key Facts About Car Accident Risks During Football Season

Whether you support the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Philadelphia Eagles, or whether you prefer a college team, football season provides plenty of opportunities to enjoy the game and root for the home team. Football is a great fall pastime and many people enjoy going to stadiums, watching games at sports bars, or attending football parties at the homes of friends.

Football season is not all fun and games, though, because there is a significant risk football fans could cause drunk driving accidents and injure themselves or others. Football spectators and other motorists on the road need to know about accident risks during football season so they can make an effort to reduce the dangers for themselves and for those they love.

Five Facts About Football Season Car Wrecks

All football fans, motorists, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and bikers on the road need to know the truth about the high risk of car crashes during football season. Here are five key facts you may not know, which could have a big impact on when and how you drive when football games are going on.

• Tailgaters are significantly more likely to be drunk than others at football games. Considering all football fans attending games, one out of every 12 leaves the stadium while legally intoxicated. When it comes to tailgaters, however, tailgaters were 14 times as likely to be so impaired by alcohol they wouldn’t be legally permitted to drive.
• Many tailgaters and other fans drink enough to be classified as binge drinking. One in four tailgaters said they’d had five or more drinks, according to ABC. Drinking five or more drinks at once is considered binge drinking.
• Fans under age 35 are also much more likely to be impaired when attending a football game at a stadium. Fans within this are group are eight times as likely to leave drunk compared with fans who were older than 35.
• Drunk driving accident risks increase significantly when big sports events like Super Bowl Sunday occur. Mothers Against Drunk Driving says 43 percent of fatal crashes on Super Bowl Sunday involve impaired drivers, compared with 31 percent on other normal days.
• DUI arrests are higher on days when football games are played. Department of Transportation data on citations and arrests in one state found 13 percent more DUI arrests on game days.

Everyone, from other drivers to football spectators, has a role to play in trying to reduce the number of car crashes which occur on football game days each year. If drivers do their part to follow rules of the road and stay sober, hopefully there will be fewer motor vehicle crashes and lives can be saved.