It’s no big shock to find out that a lot of people will be drinking a lot on Friday for St. Patrick’s Day. In fact, St. Patrick’s Day is normally the fourth most popular drinking day of the year behind New Year’s, Christmas and the Fourth of July. What’s more, 51.2% of Americans say they plan to celebrate St. Paddy’s day this year.
With all that booze being consumed on St. Paddy’s drunk driving violations tend to be high, and since this year it falls on a Friday things will be worse than normal. According to data from Alcohol Monitoring Systems, drunk driving violations by past drunk drivers will likely go up 17% on Friday as compared to any other day of the year. The rate is also expected to be 50% higher than a non-Friday St. Paddy’s day, with violations on Saturday also expected to increase 25%.
If you aren't concerned about getting to and from your St. Paddy's bash, you probably should be. Between 2011 and 2015, 252 drunk driving deaths occurred on St. Patrick’s Day. Equally scary, 75% of St. Paddy’s day drunk driving crashes involved drivers had a blood alcohol level over twice the legal limit.