John Hult offers a good thorough discussion of the ins and outs of the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation that states lower the blood-alcohol threshold for DUI charges to 0.05%. The policy and enforcement folks Hult talks to don't sound enthusiastic. But Judge Larry Long tells Hult that back in the 1970s, he had trouble getting juries to convict drunk drivers for exceeding the then-BAC limit of 0.15.
I like this summary of the question from Hult:
We all know people who think they’re okay after a few drinks. We all know people who have a higher tolerance and seem unaffected after drinking enough to lay another person out. Some of us have heard stories about Uncle Joe So-And-So who drank 12 beers a night at Yakadee Smack’s Downtown Pub for 20 years and drove home all the time but never hurt anyone.
Setting the bar at a certain level is society’s way of saying it doesn’t matter how lucky Mr. So-And-So has been. Once a person gets X amount of alcohol in their system, the science says it’s too risky for that person to get behind the wheel.
Let’s put it this way: It’s conceivable that there are people out there who, under the right circumstances, could drive away from a place at midnight with no headlights on and still make it home without a wreck. That doesn’t mean the person gets a pass on a law that says you need to drive with your headlights on after hours.
So that’s what the debate is about on a broader level, but changes to the legal limit have serious, real-world consequences in court [John Hult, "Is a .05 blood alcohol limit a possibility in South Dakota?" Amicus Lector, 2013.05.17].
As a teetotaler, I'm not the guy you want making the rules. I would suggest that if you're driving, you're not drinking. Period. There is no compelling reason to have any alcohol in your system when you're operating the deadliest household equipment in the country. When alcohol is the third-leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and traffic collisions are seventh, we're justified in drawing a pretty strict line between alcohol and driving.
On one level I agree with you; but that abolitionist zero-tolerance standard would make criminals out of a lot of little old ladies driving home after a 'bit of communion'. A better approach is that long pursued by the civilized nations of northern Europe - low DUI thresholds (0.05ish), exorbitantly high fines, confiscations/forfeiture of the vehicle of the crime, creative sentencing (wearing those orange jump suits picking up trash for a year or mores worth of weekends (that used to be free time to drink)) and mandatory prison sentences for 2d and more offenses. It will take the US about another decade to adopt a "civilized" approach to DUI - which the usual apologists will fight and eventually lose at every opportunity. South Dakota will likely be the 49th or 50th to adapt. So it goes.
I'm a huge advocate for not getting behind the wheel after any alcohol, but if memory serves, there's not a significant number of folks who're getting into accidents with BACs between 0.05 and 0.08; most of them blow right past the legal limit.
Making it more illegal to be driving smashed won't stop folks who're smashed from driving. Our real gains have been from societal pressures. Same thing for reducing smoking... laws can only go so far. We have to go the rest of the way.
MADD and the other big groups aren't for it, whatever that means. Places that serve alcohol should be required to have a breathalyzer so people can test themselves.
I see this more as a cop-out to blame the drinking limit. Instead of going after the guy who has 3 beers, we will now go after them after 2 beers. Those aren't the people we need to be looking for. Increase enforcement and start taking cars away on first offenses. Later offenses should require jail time and there is no way someone should get 8, 9, or 10 DUI's like we hear about. That is ridiculous and this change will do nothing.
John, that's a great idea!
I have a friend with a DUI because he was drinking, started his car, thought better of it, shut it off, then walked over to a cop and volunteered to have a breathalyzer done to know if he was safe.
He blew too high and the cop arrested him... because it's illegal to have your keys in the ignition with your BAC above 0.08.
How asinine is that? The guy is trying to do the responsible thing, and gets punished for it.
Cops are not the brightest people, or they wouldn't be cops.
Even so, NHTSA doesn't just come up with nonsense. They have data to support the change. I worked for SD:ASAP and getting the drunks in the legislature in those days to even think about lowering the BAC from 0.15 to 0.10 and then later to 0.08 was like pulling teeth from a boar pig high on corn mash. Even getting the TV stations to run ads was a pain since drinking and smoking seemed to a near occupational hazard as it was with lawyers.
The real problem is that SD justices have decided with a wild hare decision that we can't have dram shop laws that make the thugs selling booze responsible for damages when they dump drunks onto the highways.
Cops don't like arresting drunks. They vomit in patrol cars. Getting the Highway Patrol on board with arresting for DWIs was also a real bitch.
And now, we are getting a mess of TV shows and movies making smoking and drinking fashionable again.
If you responsible drinkers, drivers want some incentive for tougher enforcement, consider that probably 50% of your vehicle insurance is a consequence of drunken or impaired drivers. I don't like subsidizing a totally unnecessary social problem and an irresponsible industry.
Your illogic works for anything. There is no compelling reason for eating asparagus before driving. The real question is, do drivers who have between .005 and .008 percent blood alcohol drive worse than those with no detectable alcohol? Enough to justify filling prisons with them? You are correct, you are not the person we want to decide this issue. Odd how you blame not drinking for your bad judgement.
"Cops are not the brightest people, or they wouldn't be cops."
My son, a cop, would beg to differ Doug and even though I'm not a cop I do to. Pretty ignorant statement
I think the biggest problem is the drunks. I mean people who have more than one DUI. Taking their licenses or cars don't work. They'll always find something to drive.
That being said, I don't have a simple fix, or even a complicated one. Jail them? At what cost? Maybe a laser focus on prevention? Maybe a cultural shift away from drinking alcohol?
My illogic doesn't work for everything. Asparagus ≠ alcohol. The direct and primarily sought effect of asparagus is not to lower the proper functioning of cognitive faculties.
Larry Long as AG came up with the best idea in many a year. Better than any ideas we had or the feds had. The SD program that keeps drunks sober and working makes a lot of sense even if Long is a Republican and now a judge. They can also support their families which otherwise might be on welfare and adding even more costs to taxpayers' backs.
Old programs pushed by MADD locked them up and when they came out too many went right on drinking and driving often without a driver license...even those socked away for multiple years. Imprisonment should be a last resort. It is expensive and only effective in that while in jail or prison, they aren't driving.
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