NTSB Recommends Lower Drunk Driving Threshold Nationwide: 0.05 BAC 996
Officials for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have recommended a nationwide lowering of the blood-alcohol level considered safe for operating a car. The threshold is currently 0.08% — the NTSB wants to cut that to 0.05%.
"That's about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 lbs., two for a 160 lb. man. More than 100 countries have adopted the .05 alcohol content standard or lower, according to a report by the board's staff. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped, the report said. NTSB officials said it wasn't their intention to prevent drivers from having a glass of wine with dinner, but they acknowledged that under a threshold as low as .05 the safest thing for people who have only one or two drinks is not to drive at all. ... Alcohol concentration levels as low as .01 have been associated with driving-related performance impairment, and levels as low as .05 have been associated with significantly increased risk of fatal crashes, the board said."
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
I approve (Score:0, Insightful)
This will save far more lives than any sort of gun regulation ever could.
Incompatible (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, right now, there's a huge negative stigma associated with getting a DUI. It's rare enough, and heinous enough, that society views it as a serious mistake.
If you reduce the BAC threshold enough, then getting a DUI will become so common that the negative social stigma will be gone, which will defeat the purpose of having the law to begin with.
Re:Incompatible (Score:5, Insightful)
Commercial drivers are already limited to 0.02 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not make 0.02% BAC universal? I understand that there are practical limits, but should you really be going out for dinner, downing a bottle, and driving home?
(a 750ml bottle of wine over 2 hours for a 180lb person @ 0.08 = legal)
Have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner. Heck, go ahead and have two. But if you're going to drink any more than that DON'T FUCKING DRIVE A CAR.
It doesn't matter and doesn't help. (Score:5, Insightful)
why not just put us all in jail (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But this is America! (Score:5, Insightful)
If firearm and drunk driving fatalities only occurred to the people mishandling the firearm or drinking the alcohol, sure. Unfortunately they don't :-(
The crime should be for _impaired_ driving (Score:2, Insightful)
Good start but... (Score:5, Insightful)
...get serious about chasing drink driving regardless of the number.....US traffic stops with any probable cause for DUI need to get scientific, every gets to blow in the bag, non of this walk in a straight line, recite the alphabet backwards nonsense. And above all drink-driving needs to be properly stigmatized socially, I was stunned how many people drank and drive when I moved to the US from Europe, folks regularly drink many times the limit and drove when public transport/taxi is a viable alternative
Re:Mythbusters show just how impaired you are at . (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the same episode where it showed being tired or distracted by cell phones or anything else were actually significantly more impairing than the alcohol?
I don't think we should get rid of drunk driving laws by any stretch of the imagination. However, there are already plenty of distracted/reckless driver laws that exist. I just don't see the a need to create specific laws for every single possible way someone can increase their danger while driving.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
The world certainly would be entirely safe from driving accidents if nobody was ever allowed to drive. 0% is physically impossible: alcohols are a broad class of naturally occurring organic chemicals, that will be present at some (tiny) level in any human body, even if you have never taken a drink in your life. If you want to permit anyone to drive, then you'll need to set a non-zero limit somewhere; preferably above natural fluctuations in baseline level and measurement error. So, where to set the level? Do you need to check whether the driver has consumed a drink in the last year? Week? Hour? Minute? Rather than setting a useless/impossible "0 is lowest, so it must be best" limit, one should look at *actually available data* to determine how alcohol levels correlate with actual increases in accidents.
P.S.: do you ever stay up an extra 10 minutes at night, to finish reading that book chapter / checking your favorite news site? If you do, do you avoid driving the next day, because you've *knowingly decreased your driving ability* by sleep deprivation? And, if you didn't know before, you do now --- so don't even think about stepping in a car if you've stayed up the least bit past your bedtime.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to do the same with sleeping pills, pain pills, lack of sleep, cell phones, paper reading material, makeup, cigarettes (you seen what happens when a driver drops a cigarette in their lap and it rolls down their groin?), caffeine (large amounts can cause lack of focus in some people), benzodiazepines, getting blow jobs from a passenger, people driving home after seeing a dentist in some cases...
Holy shit, I could do this all day...
kids in the car yelling, passengers talking, sign spinners, bill boards, radio advertisements, cops running radar, red light cameras, dashboard instrument panels with their flashing lights, wearing headphones while driving, radios and all the buttons you can fiddle with...
Outlaw them all. Why allow someone to knowingly decrease their ability to drive?
Studies have shown... (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious problem is that it is impractical, likely to severely impact average individuals, and frankly a pretty lousy tradeoff of "freedom" versus safety. I use freedom in quotes, because yes, "driving is a privilege not a right". On a side note, those who make the idiotic argument that the internet should be a "right" because it is almost impossible to live without it are on far more untenable ground than claiming that driving ought to be a "right".
Likewise, with drinking, there are similar practical, freedom versus safety, and impact arguments. I personally fall on the, "the government doesn't give a crap about safety and wants to scam citizens for millions of dollars each year" side of the issue.
Make it 0% (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Incompatible (Score:5, Insightful)
If we had decent public transportation. I would be all for making any alcohol consumption before driving illegal. But we don't live in a world where that is possible. But the truth is, DUI or no, public transportation saves lives. Getting in your car, even sober, is the most dangerous thing you do each day. And even if you are the safest driver on the planet, the other guy who t-bones you in an intersection isn't. Building a rich public transportation system will save countless live from just everyday traffic accidents, not just DUI related accidents. And it would facilitate stricter driving laws.
Re:Mythbusters show just how impaired you are at . (Score:5, Insightful)
I can assure you, on a real road, people tend to stay a bit more alert after consuming a few drinks.
Well, I'm certainly glad that we've got the accurate scientific evidence of the assurances of an Anonymous Coward to set us straight!
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you going to do? Turn the inside of a car into a sterile wasteland and ban every possible thing that might decrease someone's ability to drive by event the smallest amount? Hey, no radio, phone, GPS, and definitely no talking to the driver. No driving hungry, or after taking cold medication, or after a Red Bull. All of those things could impact your driving in some minor way.
It's a question of proportionality. There is a point of diminishing returns beyond which the effort required to prevent people from driving after drinking becomes absurd. We can't even successfully prevent all idiots from driving at .08, despite millions in enforcement and PR campaigns. Imagine the pointlessness of spending an order of magnitude more to also fail to stop people from having a beer with dinner.
There is a point at which alchol impairs your ability to drive a car to the extent that you are an unacceptable danger. That point may be .08 or it may be .05, but it's definitely not "anything above 0".
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Banning X does not always reduce the number of people who do X, and certainly doesn't necessarily reduce the harmful consequences of X. See: alcohol, guns, marijuana.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I get what you're saying. My point falls more along the lines of, if you lower the limit from what has been the accepted standard, you're going to end up with a lot of people falling between the new and old limits getting arrested...without a proportionate increase in safety. I get the feeling people aren't going to simply stop having that second bottle of beer with dinner because the percentage rate dropped by .03; at least not until their friends and family who were always responsible drinkers before the change start running afoul of it. Then again, I guess there's always a "user education" period...
Ultimately, I'm just always wary when the law makes it easier and easier to be a lawbreaker. I'd hate for people who legitimately exercise responsible drinking to inadvertently find themselves in trouble.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the bad part about more arrests is that it dilutes the stigmatization effect of drunk driving arrests. When half or more of the people you know have a DUI, it's only a hassle, it's not embarrassing and carries no social stigma causing you to be less likely to avoid it in the future.
It's similar to the problem when people want the police to "get tough" in poor neighborhoods. It's nice rhetoric, but so many of those people have already been arrested before they just don't care outside of the headache. And for many it's a badge of courage for standing up to the man.
With the deterrence effect of stigmatizing DUIs diluted, all they can turn to are draconian laws -- soon we'd probably have a 3 strikes law for driving. Then we'd have a new problem of people driving without licenses, insurance, an increase in stolen plates (because you can't get your tabs without a license...).
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
GeeZ!!!
Lowering it to the .08 was too LOW to begin with.....
You can blow .08 and not be too impaired to drive...
Good Lord, are we going to let MADD start us back on the road to prohibition next???
But, more to the point the OP was making. Depends on the state you live in.
I asked a lawyer in my state what to do if pulled over after having a few. He said if you know you're at the limit, don't say a damned thing and put your hands out for the cuffs and go quietly. Refuse tests, don't do field sobriety test (that is NOTHING more than evidence gathering). At worst for first offense you'll get reckless driving and maybe suspended license of which you can get permits to drive to work for food, etc.
Tough yes, but better than a DWI on your record.
Like with anything dealing with the cops, first thing to do is shut up, and lawyer up.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or people with certain types of diabetes that generate natural blood alcohol.
Re:Incompatible (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_driver [wikipedia.org]
Not only won't that cost you $15/mile, you'll spend less on alcohol, too. Don't excuse being an idiot just because there's a lack of public transportation.
Re:Make it 0% (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with this. As much as I'm all for legalizing every drug under the sun, that freedom must come with responsibility, including internalizing all of the risks. If you operate heavy machinery in a factory, chances are they require you to have a 0.0% BAC on the job. Why should it be any different for machinery that actually moves around in public, in a system where driver's licenses are handed out like candy with no serious training standards?
Re:Mythbusters show just how impaired you are at . (Score:5, Insightful)
I can assure you, on a real road, people tend to stay a bit more alert after consuming a few drinks.
Assure me by citing evidence supporting your case.
peer reviewed studies >>> mythbusters > AC's personal testimony.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mythbusters show just how impaired you are at . (Score:5, Insightful)
Driving dangerously should be the issue, period. We shouldn't need to make five thousand laws for five thousand contexts. If you are reckless and dangerous on the road because of texting, talking on the phone, parenting your children in the back seat, watching videos on your laptop in the passenger seat, or just sheer stupidity or old age -- it should all fall under the same category and impact your license to drive.
The only reason a few items might sensibly be specifically classified and identified is because of the intentional choices that go into them. For example, nobody accidentally drinks and drives or accidentally texts while driving.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why not, about half of Slashdot has no problems with the Brady Campaign. and its allies running us down a parallel road based on an order of magnitude fewer deaths.
Re:It doesn't matter and doesn't help. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mythbusters show just how impaired you are at . (Score:4, Insightful)
I could go for this, if you could get it to be actually enforced. Selective enforcement ("i think drunk drivers are bad, so i'll bust them, but texting, hey, everyone does that, it can't be bad") is a problem. Fill in your own law-enforcement preferred and hated activities. Not only do you have to get police to agree to actually enforce per measured-risk, you have to get cranky old judges who liked things the way they were back then to all be on the same page.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who drinks regularly is like not that impaired at those levels.
Well, they probably are similarly impaired --- they're just more used to the condition. And if they're correspondingly more cocky about how well they handle their liquor, they'll just be that much less reluctant to head out on the road and murder a bunch of folks. Just because you can hold down a bunch more vodka shots without puking, and have developed mental coping strategies to not seem like a total klutz when you walk or speak, doesn't mean you aren't still quite impaired (without knowing it).
What about the old bat that is more impaired than either of us to do age?
Well, one could work towards increasing availability of public transportation and services for the elderly/disabled. One might even be more accepting of involuntary impairments (getting old), versus voluntary impairments (chugging a few beers soon before driving) --- realizing that banning an elderly person without preexisting access to suitable transportation alternatives from driving at all is likely a far greater hardship to them than insisting that the young and healthy pick a designated driver or arrange their drinking needs not to immediately precede their driving needs.
Re:Money-making scheme (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that you're "not that impaired" is a fancy in your head with no basis in objective measurements. You get used to the side effects and you somewhat compensate for them in your gross behavior, but the low-level stuff like reaction times and visual/oculomotor responses do not show any appreciable effects of alcohol tolerance.
Re:Commercial drivers are already limited to 0.02 (Score:5, Insightful)
Drunk driving should be based upon how impacted you are by the alcohol, not how much you've consumed.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many things that can impair driving. Kids fighting, dog puking, sun shining in your eyes, messing with the radio, and that's just off the top of my head. Who gives a shit if you can detect small changes in eye movement? Is that going to kill anybody? No? Then stop trying to push Prohibition back down our throats.
Fake statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why they recommend lower and lower alcohol contents has more to do with the way they collect statistics than with any real effect.
If any of the drivers involved in an accident has any alcohol blood content at all, it is recorded as an "alcohol related accident", NO MATTER WHO CAUSED THE ACCIDENT.
This is bias in the worst sense of the word, it's political propaganda at its worst.
Suppose you drank one beer and is stopped at a red light. Then a madd bitch rear ends you. It will be an "alcohol related" accident, pointing to the "need for stricter drunken driving laws", even though the madd bitch caused it.
Re:Mythbusters show just how impaired you are at . (Score:3, Insightful)
During WWI, you were convicted of sedition if you criticized the US's entry into the war. Apparently that is OK, because it was the law.
The difference here is that there is genuine science measuring the result. 0.08 is pretty dramatically impaired and has a marked effect on reaction times. 0.07999 is not at all "safe".
0.05 is unreasonable. It is de facto prohibition, and unconstitutional.
Prohibition? You are prohibited from drinking and then operating a two ton machine on our public road network. Boo fucking hoo.
Drink your brains out and get a buddy to drive you. Prohibition my ass.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
How can this be modded insightful. 100 countries have adopted 0.05 due to the carnage caused by drunk drivers.
Because insight requires a little more thought than "50,000 frenchmen can't be wrong". Try doing an actual risk benefit analysis. How many additional people will we imprison by moving to 0.05 per year? What are the social costs of that? Is it more or less than the cost of losing 800 people a year? Are there ways we could save 800 people per year that cost less? Do those first.
This is the kind of reasoning that needs to go into an insightful comment on the issue. As it is, I doubt anyone has done this.
On second thought, this is the country that thinks so little of mass shootings in schools that they refuse to regulate the access to firearms. Deaths on the road due to drunk drivers is nothing when compared to that.
Actually, mass shootings kill less than 100 people per year. If the NTSB is to be believed, lowering the BAC limit to .05 would save eight times as many lives as if we eliminated all mass shootings in the US. But I'm not sure I believe the NTSB.
But you're right, we do think so little of mass shootings that we refuse to regulate the access to firearms. And we are absolutely correct to do so. 100 deaths per year in a country of 300 million is negligable. You'll save orders of magnitude more lives if you regulate fructose instead of guns.
Re:FUCK THE NANNIES (Score:5, Insightful)
drivers with BACs between 0.01 and 0.03 were involved in more fatal accidents than drivers with BACs between 0.08 and 0.10
I'd imagine that's because there are more drivers with BACs of .02+/-.01 than BACs of .09+/-.01. What matters is the accident rate per capita, which Reason conveniently forgot to mention.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2011, 31,000 people died firearm-related deaths.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_gun_deaths_are_in_the_US_every_year [answers.com]
In 2010, there were 10,000 deaths due to drunk driving, and that number is falling.
http://www.centurycouncil.org/drunk-driving/drunk-driving-fatalities-national-statistics [centurycouncil.org]
More crap and bullshit from the anti-gun-control crowd.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:4, Insightful)
After seeing how friends dealt with the 0 limit on provisional drivers and in light of the fact I don't drive myself, I'd support a 0 limit - it encourages a lot of caution and forethought, particularly the morning after when you can still be drunk and might think it's just a hangover.
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:4, Insightful)
The wiki answer is from the CDC.
The century council number is from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Those not authoritative enough for you?
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:2, Insightful)
Way to cherry pick your data!
You use the term "gun deaths," meaning suicides, accidents (at 25-year lows), lawful homicide (ie, death by cop), lawful self defense, criminal on criminal homicide, and then finally at the end, the only one we're actually worried about as a society, bad guys killing good guys (and by the way, that one is at an almost 40-year low).
Then you define "alcohol deaths" as narrowly as possible: only those involving drunk driving. No mention of cirrhosis of the liver, alcohol poisoning, alcohol impairment accidents, alcohol related violence, or anything else.
More crap and bullshit, eh?
Re:Why not just 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
Although mass shootings get all the headlines, controlling access to firearms will save a whole lot more than 100 lives per year. Most of the savings will come from reduced accidental deaths and suicides.
There is a widespread belief [washingtonpost.com] that having a gun in the house makes you safer: this is not true.
(other [phys.org] sources [childrensdefense.org] along [utah.edu] those lines)
There is also a widespread belief a person who dies from suicide would have done so no matter what method: this also is not true. Most suicide attempts are impulsive acts, and most are unsuccessful. An impulse act with pills or slit wrists is unlikely to succeed: it takes time, the person may have second thoughts, and usually recovers through medical and psychological treatment. A suicide attempt by a gun is much, much more likely to succeed. If that suicidal person did not have ready access to a gun, and had to resort to a different method, the changes are good that most (i.e., more than 50%) of those people would still be with us today.