NTSB recommends lowering the legal blood alcohol limit

Great Debates
21

Used to be .1, then to .08. Now they aren’t nailing and jailing enough people so they need to lower it even more. I’d say in general the people that kill people are completely trashed, .05 to .08 or even .1 is pretty much insignificant. Except for revenues and arrest rates.

People don’t drink and drive like they used to. I got a DUI in '99, and I learned my lesson. BUT, I moved to a state that kind of let you do what you want, just don’t hurt anybody. Everybody drove with a beer in their hand, the best beer was the driving home beer after work, then they clamped down on that. Made my day 20 minutes longer. Nobody I know does that anymore, too scared, if you even have the slightest odor of beer on you, you are in for a ration of shit. If somebody plows into you if you’ve even thought of having a beer, you’re fucked.

The only people that drive DRUNK are the people that somehow get less of a punishment for offense #10 than I got for #1(and only) or the poor dude that blows a .09 because he went to a work function with his wife and the food sucked.

People simply don’t do it like they used to. The roads are safer because of it. But apparently that’s not enough, they just need to arrest more people.

If you really want to lower the limit, make it easier to get home. I used to live in a nice little place out in the boon docks that had a nice watering hole around the corner, 2 miles drive, less than a mile as the crow flies. $45 for a cab, 2 miles.
The owner was cool and he’d give you a ride(pick you up as well), as would the bar tenders and pretty much anybody else.

One reason not to get a cab, its F’n expensive the other is you end up leaving your car, and if you need it in the morning, you can be screwed.

How about a government sponsored “taxi” service, disabled, elderly etc, most can still drive. Subsidize it lightly, don’t count the earnings against their checks, and make it so you can get back to your car in the morning, or tag team them and have somebody else drive your car home. For a modest price, a few beers worth.

Or subsidize the bars, the Big Texas Steak Ranch in Amarillo has a pile of old crappy limos with cow horns on the front, they’ll pick you up at your house if you live there or a truck stop or a hotel and bring you out for some beef and brews and then drive you home. Why can’t every bar do that???

The money saved in police time, roadblocks, incarceration, public defenders, court time and costs, LIVES, its got to be worth it. But the taxi companies, they don’t want that, the public defenders don’t want that, the privately run jails and prisons don’t want that, the people that sell/rent the onboard breathalyzers, they don’t want that. The cops that get OT for DUI enforcement, they don’t want that. The companies that make the big fancy field lab trailers that they use for road blocks, they don’t want that either, or the company that gets to tow and store your car for an outrageous fee.

Or the people that run the drunk driving “schools”, when I went in '99, it was $626.32 per person for 17 hours(funny how I remember that), one instructor, a crappy rented conference room, about 20 of us, an hour a week, plus an intake interview. I can’t knock this all that hard, it was actually fun, I learned a lot, mainly that bad people that get DUI’s really deserved them, and a lot of people just drank too much once and some people just got really screwed.

I’ll expand on that since I’m at work, and I don’t want to do it anymore… One kid, 19… Nice kid, clean cut, intelligent, well spoken, black kid, got pulled over in a white suburb, blew a .03 or something, and he only got dragged in because he couldn’t recite the alphabet from ‘M’ to ‘E’ backwards. Another guy, blew a .07 and a .28, since they make you blow twice and he didn’t have the money to fight the erronious readings. Another guy had been nailed in another state 15 years prior that didn’t reciprocate, paid his fines, didn’t drive in that state, and then the states started reciprocating, so he got drug into court and had to repay fines, lost his license and had to go to drunk school just like he got nailed the night before.

There were also people that really deserved it, the lady that blew a red light and T-boned a cop car. The other 19 year old punk (white kid, so I’m not playing favorites) that got nailed driving on his suspended license and was drunk to boot and had his sentence moved so that he could finish the first offense drunk school. He was the jerk that showed up with beer on his breath, and the rules were no drinking before you got there, though you could go to the bar afterwards and have a few responsibly, and most of us did.

My story, I deserved it, I did it, and that wasn’t the first time. I watched the machine, I blew a .24 and a .28, they put down that I blew a .21. I knew the sergeant on duty quite well. He must have given me 50 drunk tests before they made me blow. He let me keep my glasses in the cell, let me have my smokes as long as I didn’t get an ash on the floor, let me have a newspaper to read and had the magistrate there in a few hours so I could get out for $25, then he drove me home and told me what to do and expect in court. I called him a few days later and he explained it all to me again when I could understand and remember it. He also picked me up several times after that, but I was hoofing it, and he’d give me a ride home… Good guy.

So, first offense, before it got nasty on the penalties. $75 for towing my car, $20 per day storage (1 day since they towed after midnight). $25 to get out of jail (on my own recognizance), $135 court fee, $540 probation fee, even though I only saw or talked to the lady once, $626.32 for drunk school. $600 for a lawyer to stand there and make sure I wasn’t made the example of, $300 license reinstatement, and $35 for a new license since they cut mine in half. I was taking home about $280 a week at that point and living out on my own… and my insurance went up 40% and stayed up there for 5 years. And after riding my bike to work at 4am in February in New England a few times, I was paying people for a ride.

Learned my lesson.

They want you to drive drunk, and if enough people aren’t driving drunk, well then… lets just change the rules so that you are driving drunk. Their revenue stream depends on it.

22

They probably can but for some reason they don’t.

I see terrible drivers endanger everyone on the road on a daily basis with no enforcement. And there are people getting DUIs that have designated drivers (but when they stop at a gas station to use the restroom, the cop sees the drunk person and arrests them because it’s their car, even though they weren’t driving it). Or the guy who got a DUI for sleeping it off in the back seat of his car in the driveway after a party.

Because it’s quantitative, DUI charges must stick in a way the cops’ testimony doesn’t. Or they’re easier to demonize (“aw, that guy’s just tired, I’ll let him drive home and get some rest” vs. “that guy had a beer! He’s a monster who’s trying to kill somebody!!”). I don’t know what the reason is, but DUIs are stigmatized and enforced while driving like an idiot is simply laughed at. That needs to change, in both directions.

23

I fall firmly in the camp that thinks it’s absurd to lower it when there’s no good way to tell if you’ve run afoul of the law.

For example, they say a 180 lb man can have 4 beers in an hour and not be above .05% BAC. Is that on a full or empty stomach? What about what he ate? What interval- is that one beer every 15 minute exactly? What if he had them front-stacked with the first 2 in the first 15 minutes, the 3rd at 30, and the 4th at 45 mins? What if he weighs 190 lbs? 300 lbs? What if he’s a really fat 180 lbs, or a 3% body fat muscled up monster at 180 lbs?

All these things make it damn near impossible to accurately gauge your BAC without any kind of outside reference, and like others have said, it’s not really possible to accurately determine your BAC by your own perceptions, at least without not having had some training with a breathalyzer while drinking.

I’m not so much against the lowering of the legal limit as I am against the idea that the solution to the problem is solely a punitive one. I honestly don’t think most non-alcoholics who get DWIs intend to drive drunk- in the absence of a way to know, they’ve had too many, and their judgment is impaired, and they legitimately think they’re ok to drive home. Nothing malicious, and not even really bad judgment; just somewhat impaired by alcohol and without a reference to make a good decision from.

There needs to be some other way to determine who’s drunk and get them home safely other than the current system where if someone makes a bad decision (without the tools to make it), they get nailed to the wall.

24

There is one absolutely foolproof way to avoid the risks of DUI. Don’t drink and drive. Not a drop. That’s the method my wife and I use. If we go out to dinner or whatever, and one of us has a drink, the other gets the car keys and has no alcohol that night. No questions, no drama, no exceptions.

25

This sort of abuse has already discredited speed limits, which are more or less universally regarded as a joke. Lowering the BAC below its current level is likely to produce the same effect, returning social attitudes to the “Mad Men” era where drinking and driving wasn’t regarded as a big deal as long as you didn’t get caught (and even if you did get caught, you would be regarded as a victim of some lazy donut-muncher filling his quota, not as a real criminal of the sort the donut-muncher ought to be out catching).

26

What thresholds are you referring to?

While I agree that no one should drink and drive, I also don’t believe in legislating our way to safety. I don’t believe in the seat belt laws even though I’m sure they save lives.

I, for one, could not have 4 beers and be under the legal limit. I’ve had 4 beers over a period of 4 hours and still didn’t feel entirely capable of driving home (7 minutes)

As an aside, I really wish that we had a better public transportation system but as a big ole wide state with lots of suburban areas, it just isn’t feasible.

27

Indeed, depending on the jurusdiction there are different charges for each. You can be charged for DWI if you’re not over .08, and you can be charged for having a BAC over .08 even if you’re not clearly intoxicated.

28

Do you have an equal lack of tolerance for eating and driving, talking on the phone (even hands free) or driving on just a few hours’ sleep?

Should we eliminate drive-through fast food and bluetooth transceivers in cars? I mean, there’s a foolproof way of not driving while distracted: Just take the battery out of your phone, never drive if you’ve had less than 8 hours sleep in the previous 24 hours, and don’t put so much as a breath mint or a sip of coffee in your mouth behind the wheel. Also, don’t drive with other, distracting, humans (such as gabby friends or whining children) in the car, have the radio removed by a mechanic before driving, and only buy cars without cup holders.

Easy and foolproof, right? And now I can feel superior to all you coffee sippers and radio fiddlers. What the hell is the matter with you people?

29

It’s not about tolerance. It’s about avoiding a potential criminal charge. I do criminal defense, in addition to other areas of practice.

30

There are some countries where the legal blood alcohol limit for DUI is zero. That is, if you’re caught driving with any measurable alcohol in your blood at all, it’s an automatic DUI.

31

That’s the case in the US for drivers under 21. (Well, they lose their license, I’m not sure if it counts as a DUI.) Although, I think (at least in Illinois) “zero BAC” is defined as 0.01%. Which means you can still drive home from church after you take communion.

32

Thanks for the sly insults.

There’s workarounds, like disposable straws and overides for your objections. Hell, just because we can’t make it perfect, we shouldn’t bother? With that world-class reasoning (there’s my attempt), we wouldn’t be driving in the first place, because scores of people are going to kill and/or die behind the wheel anyhow.

Inaction is a dumb idea.

33

No, installing expensive and unnecessary equipment on all cars because some people drive drunk is a dumb idea. Installing such devices for some period of time after a conviction is a potential compromise.

34

.05 is absurdly low. All it will do is catch people who had a couple of drinks at dinner, while the drunk with 5 DUIs will still be out there at .26.

Didn’t we just go through this from .1 to .08? When will it stop? At .00?

35

Every word of this was said about both seatbelts and then airbags.

36

I’d be fine with that, honestly. I follow Oakminster’s rule: if I drink a single drop of alcohol, I’m not driving. Period. I don’t get what’s so hard about it.

37

I doubt there was much mention about waiting for DUI convictions before requiring seatbelts/airbags. Got a cite?

38

And that would be bad … why?

I like a glass of wine (or a beer, or a manhattan) as much as the next person, but it baffles me that some people think drinking and driving is some kind of necessity or natural right.

39

Because, at least what silly me was always taught was that “drunk” driving was the problem, not “have a little bit of alcohol in your system” driving.

Alcohol is part of social life in the United States. Christmas parties, business functions, golf outings, picnics, parties at each others’ homes, etc. I agree with the reforms of the last 30 years: Don’t get shitfaced and try to aim your way home. Message received.

But, under power of the state, not be able to have a couple of beers with your ribs? That’s too far, does nothing to promote safety, and is the next step down the slippery slope that was SWORN would never happen and that we were just being paranoid, during the whole .08 debate.

40

Just to be clear, you think if I, as a 225lb man, have one beer after a meal, and then drive home, I should be punished with jail, fines, and a license suspension? For what public safety purpose? By all measures, I am not harming anyone by this behavior.