Proposed new DUI standards

[kritikalcat]

I'm a little surprised I haven't seen discussion of this yet on any sites I visit. The NTSB has announced that they are going to begin pushing for all 50 states to lower the per se DUI standard to .05 BAC which they project will save around 800 lives/year.

From a personal standpoint, when I do go out I'm not comfortable having more than 2 drinks over the course of a night, and just 1 if it's only dinner. At 175 Lbs I don't think I'm at much risk. One could argue that any level over .02 increases chances of being involved in an accident sufficiently relative to .02 and below that the cut-off should be lowered even further. It's hard to argue against saving 800+ lives per year.

On the other hand, what about the costs of implementing something like this to achieve a very incremental reduction in wrecks, injuries and fatalities? The number of people driving on a typical weekend evening at .05-.079 is 3x the number driving at .08 and above. Sure, the new standards combined with education and stigmatization will lower that rate; but I'm not sure it's unreasonable to think that DUI enforcement and arrests will have to double to be effective. Leave aside that would mean 2x as many people paying the price of having a DUI on their record (and keep in mind that the danger from a .05-.079 driver is FAR, FAR less than from .01+ driver yet we'll stigmatize those people as being just as bad); how about the expansion in police resources and tax dollars required? The impact on the hospitality industry may be significant, too.

As people who advocate more government control often do, they are pointing out that in most European countries and elsewhere there is a .05 standard, and of course how much tougher foreign DUI laws are. What they fail to tell you is that in most of those countries .05 is illegal but it's "just" a ticket and fine; the hard core penalties they talk about usually don't kick in until much higher BAC levels, in many countries not until .12 and higher. The crew at MADD doesn't want people to know that the drunks at .15 and higher account for 56% of the fatalities, and people driving at .05-.079 account for about 2% although they make up far more of the drivers on the road on a Saturday night. If you're a neo-prohibitionist you want to make the public believe that the driver who has 1 beer and gets behind the wheel is as evil as the one who drinks a case of beer and drives.

And FWIW, if you've lost a family member to a drunk driver, you have my sympathy; it's happened in my family, too.

[CitizenBBN]

Great post, and an interesting topic.

I'm hoping strongly it doesn't go very far, and I don't think it will but you never know. As you said, it seems every call to add laws cites Europe as an example, but in this case they leave out the penalty differences and also other differences in driver patterns, geography, public transportation, etc.

Once you push the BAC down below .08 you're now in a way discriminating against someone who has had a drink b/c numerous studies show they are no more, and often are less, impaired than someone talking on the phone or just tired from work. You're into the level of "impaired" we see with someone taking Dayquil or Sudafed. Do we bust them too?

The drunk driving stats are one of the most abused and misused in public policy. In their world a drunk person on foot being hit by a car is an "alcohol related traffic fatality" that is then cited so as to connote it being a drunk driver.

The biggest drunk driver problem in this country is repeat offenders who drive repeatedly well above the .08 limit. Resources would be far better used to address keeping repeat offenders and people with .1+ BACs off the road than to push down into the realm of people who are no more impaired than a person getting off a 12 hour factory shift.

It doesn't really impact me, but I never view policy in terms of how it impacts me personally. Where I live I walk when I go out drinking, and the nature of my various licenses is such I never risk a DUI, but this is about equality before the law as much as public safety. People who drive run a full range from completely alert to distracted to impaired, not counting how many people just flat are lousy drivers at any level of alertness. You draw your lines and laws across that range, you don't target one group and leave other just as dangerous groups alone.

one thing is for sure. Never believe the stats MADD and others put out, including the NTSB. Like most every extremist group of any political persuasion, they shred the truth with those numbers.

[CitizenBBN]

Oh, and I'm also against a national BAC at all b/c there is of course no federal authority for such a law, they just set one and make the states meet it lest they lose transportation funding. So the entire precept of Congressional action on drunk driving is unconstitutional, enforced only by the Federal government's ability to coerce the states through funding. "Legal" yes, but completely in violation of the principle of Federalism.

That's esp. true in this case, where the externality of a drunk driving incident is so localized. if Texas has drunks roaming the roads in droves it doesn't put the safety of someone on a highway in Massachusetts in jeopardy in any way. You'd have to be in that state to be exposed, so it is the perfect state level issue as the public safety is contained within that state. Such an approach would allow states to tailor laws as appropriate to their demographics and geographics and determine what the best methods were to insure the safety of their citizenry. Clearly the things that lead to traffic fatalities are different in the rural Plains versus Manhattan.

[kritikalcat]

All good additions to the topic, Citizen. I had meant to add the public transport issue vis-a-vis US vs. Europe.

It took 20 years for .08 to be universal, and I expect this to take as long or longer unless the Feds force it, though that's the danger of the salami tactic. "Progressive" states like NY and CA will adopt because the big urban areas have the public transit and voters will go for anything that makes them "more like Europe." The Bible Belt states where opposition to anything alcohol related is stronger than personal freedom will adopt. But eventually the states that resist are under pressure to follow suit until they all adopt.

[CitizenBBN]

"Progressive" states like NY and CA will adopt because the big urban areas have the public transit and voters will go for anything that makes them "more like Europe." The Bible Belt states where opposition to anything alcohol related is stronger than personal freedom will adopt. But eventually the states that resist are under pressure to follow suit until they all adopt.

lol, very well said. That is SO why so many progressives will vote for such a thing.

Never have understood the dichotomy of the bible belt. You can go to a county and convince them that no one of any age can be trusted with the right to buy a beer, but go to that same county and tell them people shouldn't be trusted with the responsibility of owning an assault rifle and see the reaction you get. I strongly recommend against trying it even as a joke. FWIW I've never understood any part of the country completely other than the Keys, where "whatever" is pretty easy to pick up on. :)


edit - don't want to stray off the topic. I agree that will probably be the pattern, though the bible belt may be reaching its satisfaction rate with this level of BAC. for all the Sunday sobriety there's a fair amount of tailgating joy in those states, and going much farther down is going to make it hard to haul the boat to the lake.

[kritikalcat]

Good point about Saturdays down South :-)

I went back and looked at my data, it's 15 years old, so I'd like to see something more current.

Still, I suspect the current data will still indicate a massive increase or diversion in justice system resources to produce a very modest improvement in safety, while ignoring other significant contributors to motor vehicle accidents.