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| FILE - In this Feb. 7, 2013 file photo, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Deborah Hersman speaks during a news conference in Washington. Federal accident investigators were weighing a recommendation Tuesday that states reduce their threshold for drunken driving from the current .08 blood alcohol content to .05, a standard that has been shown to substantially reduce highway deaths in other countries. Hersman said. “Alcohol-impaired deaths are not accidents, they are crimes. They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will.” |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly
half- from .08 blood alcohol level to .05-matching a standard that has
substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a federal
safety board recommended Tuesday. That's about one drink for a woman
weighing less than 120 pounds, two for a 160-pound man.
More
than 100 countries have adopted the .05 alcohol content standard or
lower, according to a report by the staff of the National Transportation
Safety Board. 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.
A drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of 80-proof alcohol in most studies.
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.
New approaches are needed to
combat drunken driving, which claims the lives of about a third of the
more than 30,000 people killed each year on U.S highways - a level of
carnage that that has remained stubbornly consistent for the past decade
and a half, the board said.
"Our goal is to
get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable,"
NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. "Alcohol-impaired deaths are not
accidents, they are crimes. They can and should be prevented. The tools
exist. What is needed is the will."
An alcohol
concentration threshold of .05 is likely to meet strong resistance from
states, said Jonathan Adkins, an official with the Governors Highway
Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices.
"It
was very difficult to get .08 in most states so lowering it again won't
be popular," Adkins said. "The focus in the states is on high (blood
alcohol content) offenders as well as repeat offenders. We expect
industry will also be very vocal about keeping the limit at .08."
Even
safety groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and AAA
declined Tuesday to endorse NTSB's call for a .05 threshold. The
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets national
safety policy, stopped also short of endorsing the board's
recommendation.
"NHTSA is always interested in
reviewing new approaches that could reduce the number of drunk drivers
on the road, and will work with any state that chooses to implement a
.05 BAC law to gather further information on that approach," the safety
administration said in a statement.
The board recommended NHTSA established "incentive grants" designed to encourage states to adopt the lower threshold.
A
study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has estimated that
7,082 deaths would have been prevented in 2010 if all drivers on the
road had blood alcohol content below .08 percent.
The
lower threshold was one of nearly 20 recommendations made by the board,
including that states adopt measures to ensure more widespread use of
use of alcohol ignition interlock devices. Those require a driver to
breathe into a tube, much like the breathalyzers police ask suspected
drunken drivers to use.
The board has
previously recommended states require all convicted drunken drivers
install the interlock devices in their vehicles as a condition to resume
driving. Currently, 17 states and two California counties require all
convicted drivers use the devices.
However,
only about a quarter of drivers ordered to use the devices actually end
up doing so, the board said. Drivers use a variety of ways to evade
using the devices, including claiming they won't drive at all or don't
own a vehicle and therefore don't need the devices, the board said.
The
board recommended the safety administration develop a program to
encourage states to ensure all convicted drivers actually use the
devices. The board also recommended that all suspected drunken drivers
whose licenses are confiscated by police be required to install
interlocks as a condition of getting their licenses reinstated even
though they haven't yet been convicted of a crime.
Courts
usually require drivers to pay for the devices, which cost about $50 to
$100 to buy plus a $50 a month fee to operate, staff said.
The
board has previously called on the safety administration and the auto
industry to step up their research into technology for use in all
vehicles that can detect whether a driver has elevated blood alcohol
without the driver breathing into a tube or taking any other action.
Drivers with elevated levels would be unable to start their cars.
But the technology is still years away.
Studies
show more than 4 million people a year in the U.S. drive while
intoxicated, but about half of the intoxicated drivers stopped by police
escape detection, the NTSB report said. The board also recommended
expanded use of passive alcohol devices by police. The devices are often
contained in real flash lights or shaped to look like a cellphone that
officers wear on their shirt pockets or belts. If an officer points the
flashlight at a driver or the cellphone-like device comes in close
proximity to an intoxicated driver, the devices will alert police who
may not have any other reason to suspect drunken driving.
The use of the devices currently is very limited, the report said.
Dramatic
progress was made in the 1980s through the mid-1990s after the minimum
drinking age was raised to 21 and the legally-allowable maximum level of
drivers' blood alcohol content was lowered to .08, the report said.
Today, drunken driving claims nearly 10,000 lives a year, down from
21,000 in 1982. At that time, alcohol-related fatalities accounted for
48 percent of highway deaths.
The board made
its recommendations on the 25th anniversary of one of the nation's
deadliest drunken driving accidents in Carrollton, Ky. A drunk driver
drove his pickup on the wrong side of a highway, collided with a bus and
killed 27 people, 24 of them children. The children were part of a
church youth group on their way home after spending the day at an
amusement park.
