http://www.washtimes.com:80/opinion/ed1.html
FYI: on current debate (by the way, is anybody writing the history of
alcoholic drink and the automobile/truck? Would seem a great topic for
comparative social history of alcohol.
> [The Washington Times] [Opinion]
> [Image]
> Published in Washington, D.C. 5am -- March 6, 1998
> www.washtimes.com
> [(see thetext links at the bottom of the page)]
> [Image]
>
> [Image] EDITORIAL
> [Image] Drinking and driving and posturing
> [Image] [F] or a few years the Republican Congress did
> [Image] its best to respect the rights of states to
> [Image] govern themselves. The rules of the road were a
> prime example: States were given (or rather,
> were given back) the power to set their own
> speed limits and to choose whether to make
> motorcyclists wear helmets. But that spirit is
> no more. Wednesday, the Senate returned with a
> vengeance to the oldest of federal legislative
> prerogatives -- withholding highway money from
> the states if they don't jump through
> Washington's hoops. By a 2-1 bipartisan
> majority, the Senate voted to force states to
> lower the amount of alcohol it takes to count
> as a drunk driver. A majority of states now
> consider a driver drunk if his blood alcohol
> concentration (BAC) is .10 or more. Under the
> Senate legislation, those states will lose
> multiple millions in highway dollars unless
> they adopt a .08 limit.
> When the debate was about speed limits,
> conservatives regularly made this simple
> argument: If 55 miles per hour is so obviously
> the sane and sensible maximum highway speed,
> then why would state legislators choose to
> raise it? The idea was that Washington doesn't
> have a monopoly on common sense. If most states
> choose a 65 mph limit, that suggests that 65
> mph is a reasonable highway speed. The same
> goes for blood alcohol levels: If two-thirds of
> the states have settled on .10 for the legal
> definition of a drunk driver, doesn't that
> suggest the common standard might have
> something to recommend itself? State
> legislators, after all, don't want to see
> children run down by drunks any more than U.S.
> senators do.
> Mothers Against Drunk Driving -- which has
> for the most part run an admirable campaign to
> reduce the number of automobile accidents
> caused by drink -- has done its best at the
> state level to persuade legislatures to reduce
> the legal blood-alcohol limit. But for all
> their efforts, last year not a single .10 state
> decided to adopt the .08 standard. (Which is
> the reason MADD has now turned to Congress, in
> hopes of forcing on the states an option they
> had dismissed.) Why is it that states haven't
> charged to lower their drinking limits? Perhaps
> because there isn't much in the way of evidence
> to suggest that a lower limit will save any
> lives.
> The most interesting statistic in the BAC
> debate comes from the National Highway Traffic
> Safety Administration, which keeps track of
> alcohol-related accidents. For starters, it
> should be noted that to say an accident is
> alcohol related is not the same thing as to say
> that the accident was caused by drinking. As
> the American Beverage Institute (which opposes
> the lower BAC) is fond of pointing out, an
> alcohol-related accident is any incident in
> which one of the parties involved has had even
> the slightest taste of drink. For example, if a
> stone-sober driver runs a red light and hits a
> pedestrian who had just had a beer, that is an
> "alcohol-related" accident for NHTSA's
> purposes. Similarly, NHTSA counts as
> "alcohol-related" any accident in which a
> driver has even a minuscule .01 BAC. No one can
> credibly argue that a driver with a .01 BAC is
> drunk. And yet, in 1996, drivers with .01-.03
> BAC were responsible for a greater percentage
> of "alcohol-related" traffic fatalities than
> were drivers with blood alcohol levels of
> .08-.09. It isn't until drivers get over the
> .10 BAC that the fatality rates start to go up.
> Could it be that this is why the majority of
> states have stuck with their .10 standard?
> Drivers in the .01-.03 range account for
> 6.7 percent of "alcohol-related" fatalities;
> those in the .10-.11 range account for 7.3
> percent; those in the .12-.13 range account for
> 8.2 percent of such deaths. The increase in
> fatalities over .10 is slight, but it is an
> increase nonetheless. It can hardly compare
> with the staggering increase that comes when
> one looks at those who are obviously seriously
> drunk -- drivers whose BAC is .14 or more. In
> 1996, more than 62 percent of alcohol-related
> fatalities were the work of drivers whose BAC
> was higher than .14. It's clear that the
> hard-core heavy drinkers (those who gulp down a
> beer every ten minutes or so for a few hours
> before getting behind the wheel) are the real
> highway menaces. Lowering the legal limit from
> .10 to .08 will do nothing to get the hard-core
> heavy drinkers off the road.
> The solution to the persistent problem of
> drunk driving is to crack down on the drunks
> who repeatedly drive while seriously impaired.
> And this solution is best implemented by the
> state legislatures -- who are, after all, the
> ones whose courts will be trying the offenders.
> The House still has to grapple with the issue.
> Let's hope its members will deal with the
> problem more sensibly than the Senate did.
>
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