Impaired driving is one of the most preventable causes of serious injury on Minnesota roads. And yet, we keep seeing it. On U.S. Highway 10 through Sartell. On Highway 371 heading north out of Brainerd toward the lakes. On Highway 210 through Baxter. These are roads people drive every day. When a driver gets behind the wheel drunk or high, anyone else could pay the price.
We work with people across Stearns County, Crow Wing County, and the surrounding areas who have been seriously hurt in crashes involving impaired drivers. These cases are not abstract legal problems. They involve real injuries, real medical bills, and real disruption to people’s lives. Understanding how drugs and alcohol can lead to terrible motor vehicle accidents helps explain why victims have the right to recover damages.
What Does Alcohol Actually Do to a Driver’s Ability?
Alcohol is still the most common substance involved in serious crashes. People often assume that a driver has to be visibly stumbling to be dangerous. That is not how it works.
Even at relatively modest levels, alcohol begins affecting the skills a driver needs most. It can reduce coordination, concentration, the ability to track moving objects, and the ability to respond to emergency situations, and it creates difficulty with steering and maintaining lane position. Think about what that means on a busy stretch of Highway 15 or near the Sartell Bridge over the Mississippi. A driver who cannot track moving objects or hold a lane is a serious hazard to everyone around them.
Minnesota law sets a legal blood alcohol concentration limit of 0.08 for most drivers, though you can be arrested for DWI at lower levels. Personal injury law also recognizes that impairment is not always about a number. Courts look at all the evidence, including erratic driving, slurred speech, and poor performance on field sobriety tests, to determine whether alcohol or drugs affected the driver’s nervous system, brain, or muscles to the point that they could not operate their vehicle the way a prudent and cautious person would.
And another thing worth understanding: using two or more substances at the same time, including alcohol, can amplify the impairing effects of each one consumed. A driver who has had a few drinks and also used marijuana or a prescription painkiller may be far more impaired than either substance alone would suggest.
How Marijuana and Opioids Like Fentanyl Change the Picture Behind the Wheel
Marijuana is now legal in Minnesota for adults, and that has created some genuine confusion about driving. To clarify that point directly: legal use does not mean safe to drive. Just because you can legally use marijuana in Minnesota does not mean you can use it and then get behind the wheel while impaired by it.
The science on marijuana and driving is not ambiguous. Marijuana affects psychomotor skills and cognitive functions that are critical to driving, including vigilance, drowsiness, time and distance perception, reaction time, divided attention, lane tracking, coordination, and balance. That is a long list. And when you layer marijuana on top of alcohol, the impairment compounds. Research has shown negative effects of marijuana on drivers, including increased lane weaving, poor reaction time, and altered attention to the road, and using alcohol with marijuana makes drivers even more impaired, causing still more lane weaving.
Fentanyl and other opioids present a different but equally serious problem. Drugs like opioids can cause sleepiness or drowsiness while driving. Prescription medicines including benzodiazepines and opioids can cause drowsiness, dizziness, and impaired cognitive functioning, meaning impaired thinking and judgment. A driver who nods off for even a second or two on Highway 371 at 65 miles per hour covers a lot of ground in that time. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety specifically lists fentanyl among the substances that contribute to drugged driving incidents in the state.
Two More Ways Impairment Kills Driving Ability
Reaction time and judgment. Those two things are what separate a close call from a catastrophic crash.
Reaction time is the gap between when a driver sees a hazard and when they actually respond. Alcohol, marijuana, and opioids all stretch that gap. Drivers under the influence of marijuana have slower reaction times. Alcohol does the same. On a road where traffic can stop suddenly or a deer can step out without warning, a delayed reaction can mean the difference between stopping in time and a serious collision.
Impaired judgment is harder to measure but just as dangerous. Alcohol alters vision and depth perception, making it hard to judge distances accurately, and impaired judgment means decisions that normally seem obvious can become clouded. A driver under the influence may genuinely believe they are driving fine. That false confidence is part of what makes impaired driving so unpredictable and so deadly. Not every person reacts the same or has similar effects from different substances, and body weight, tolerance, metabolism, and the mixture of drugs all play a role in how a person reacts. There is no reliable way for an impaired person to self-assess their own level of impairment. That is the core of the problem.
What It Means for You If an Impaired Driver Caused Your Injuries
Minnesota is a no-fault insurance state, which means your own personal injury protection coverage typically pays first, regardless of who caused the crash. These PIP claims can provide compensation for economic damages, and the drunk driver may face financial penalties in the form of increased insurance premiums. But PIP has limits, and serious injuries often exceed them.
When injuries are significant, a civil claim against the impaired driver may be an option worth exploring. A drunk driver could face consequences in civil court after causing injuries or deaths, and victims may be able to pursue compensation for damages like funeral expenses, medical bills, and lost future earnings. The standard of proof in a civil case is lower than in a criminal case, which matters. You can bring a civil claim even without a criminal charge, because civil cases use a lower standard of proof than criminal cases, and evidence of impairment such as witness accounts, bar receipts, and officer observations can still support your claim.
Our team of car accident attorneys is here to help people in Sartell, Brainerd, and the surrounding communities understand their options and seek justice from the impaired drivers who harmed them. Reach out to Gabrielson Law Offices, LTD whenever you are ready.