How Much Is Too Much by Chas Terry Hello to Bob and all his readers from here in beautiful South Carolina. It's a truly great place to live but sadly we have the nation’s highest rate of traffic fatalities involving drunken drivers. To combat this there's a movement here to lower the DUI threshold. The question however that all the proponents of that change can't seem to give a straight answer to is would that make a difference? The National Transportation Safety Board thinks it would,since they just approved a similar proposal to lower the blood-alcohol concentration level at which a person is presumed to be impaired from the current 0.08 to 0.05 or less. At that threshold, some people, and particularly slender women, could have enough alcohol in their blood to support a DUI charge after a single drink. For example only one bottle of one of the high-alcohol craft beers available today, or an 8- ounce glass of wine, and you could have a one-drink DUI. Many of us however do not believe that lowering the limit would reduce drunken driving, and even worse, such a low limit could result in people who aren’t impaired being charged with DUI. The National Transportation Safety Board says someone who has consumed enough alcohol to register a 0.05 has a 38% greater chance of being in a wreck. The board says action is needed to reduce alcohol-related fatalities that persistently account for nearly a third of U.S. highway deaths. What they don't say is exactly how that statistic was created. For example, if a driver who has NOT had a single drink gets into a fender bender accident while driving someone in the back seat who has had a few drinks the accident is classified as "alcohol related". That's a bit of a stretch. The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade group, says the 0.05 recommendation is “ludicrous.” Moving from 0.08 to 0.05 would criminalize perfectly responsible behavior,they said. The fact is that most drivers involved in wrecks have either had nothing to drink, or have consumed enough alcohol to put them far over the current legal limit. Nationwide, 64 % of fatal crashes yearly involved no drivers with alcohol in their blood, and 31 % involved at least one driver with a level high enough to be presumed impaired under current law. Most impaired drivers had at least triple the blood-alcohol limit the NTSB now endorses. In addition, the total number of fatal highway accidents has been falling steadily for years. To me it seems this lower threshold would criminalize behavior that is completely responsible since it targets moderate and responsible social drinkers. All of us would be better served if the focus was on repeat offenders and people who are far past the 0.08 %threshold. Some statistics show that the increased accident risk for .008 as opposed to .005 is about the same as driving 5 mph over the speed limit so why draconian penalties on the guy who has one or two beers and not on speeders? Needless to say everyone regardless of where you stand on this issue should be totally against drunk driving. It is a terrible danger. The question remains however when are you too impaired to safely drive? I don't know the answer but I do think it should not be based on guess work, inflated statistics, the need for town revenue, or other such things. ------------ Thanks to Chas for writing our June column. It's certainly one that will likely cause some debate. Please remember I encourage all my readers to send me their articles and just maybe you'll see yours in print just like Chas! Cheers! Bob |
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