Police Arrest Woman for DWI Following Multi-Vehicle Collision on LIE

MELVILLE, NY- LongIsland.com reports that a crash involving eight vehicles on the Long Island Expressway involved a drunk driver. The Long Island car accident occurred at around 10:22 p.m. on October 19, 2018.

Traffic in the LIE eastbound lanes was slowed down because of a car fire. Two vehicles stuck in the traffic collided and caused a chain-reaction that involved eight vehicles, one of which was an oil tanker. The driver of a minivan, 45-year-old Suzanne Butler, of East Meadow, skidded and drove under the oil tanker. Her vehicle became wedged beneath the truck. Butler exited the vehicle and was transported to the Huntington Hospital for treatment.

The police later charged Butler with Driving While Intoxicated.

Drunk driving continues to be a major problem on roads in the United States. Efforts to prevent the dangerous behavior have managed to greatly reduce the number of drunk driving related incidents in recent decades. Fatalities related to drunk driving have declined by 48 percent since 1982. During the same period, overall traffic fatalities have dropped by about 18 percent.

Still, in 2017, 29 percent of all motor vehicle-related fatalities involved drunk drivers. Data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) indicates that out of the 37,133 traffic deaths in 2017, 10,874 deaths took place in crashes in which at least one involved driver had a blood-alcohol level that exceeding the legal limit of .08 percent. The majority of those crashes, 67 percent, involved drunk drivers whose blood alcohol level was .15 or greater.

New York’s rate of fatal alcohol-related accidents is lower than the national average.