The NAS recommends a BAC of <.05
January 19, 2018 1:29 PM   Subscribe

[S]tudies from countries that have decreased their BAC laws to 0.05 percent, such as Austria, Denmark, and Japan, demonstrate that this is an effective policy. In their 500-page report, Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem, the non-partisan National Academy of Sciences note that "Alcohol-impaired driving is an important health and social issue as it remains a major risk to Americans’ health today, surpassing deaths per year of certain cancers, HIV/AIDS, and drownings, among others, and contributing to long-term disabilities from head and spinal injuries." and make recommendations for broad changes, including lowering the BAC levels from .08 to .05 percent.

When Utah passed a similar law, the "American Beverage Institute" placed full page adds claiming that Utah legislators over the age of 65 were a greater threat.
posted by craniac (148 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
More ABI freakouts here.
posted by craniac at 1:31 PM on January 19, 2018


I'm not sure that your typical Breathalyzer is accurate enough to distinguish .05 from .08. I haven't had a drink in 6 years, and I wouldn't want to take a breath test right now, to be honest. I think a very low level being made the legal limit should require that conviction depends on a blood test.
posted by thelonius at 1:35 PM on January 19, 2018 [15 favorites]


Isn't the recommendation you always ask for a blood test anyway? Or is that just when you have actually been drinking and think you might be marginal?
posted by tavella at 1:43 PM on January 19, 2018



I'm not sure that your typical Breathalyzer is accurate enough to distinguish .05 from .08. I haven't had a drink in 6 years, and I wouldn't want to take a breath test right now, to be honest. I think a very low level being made the legal limit should require that conviction depends on a blood test.


Victoria, Australia has had .05 as the limit for as long as I can remember, and we have no problems with police accurately detecting .05 limits with our breathalyzers.
posted by daybeforetheday at 1:44 PM on January 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


A breathalyser is totally accurate enough to measure that difference. This has been the limit in Australia for decades with no problems.

The evidence is super clear on this, and the US approach is as backwards as the imperial measurement system.

In fact the evidence is pretty clear that a zero limit is the best, but good luck trying to get that one through.
posted by smoke at 1:46 PM on January 19, 2018 [37 favorites]


"Freakouts" seems a bit unfair. Low-BAC laws can lead to less-than-great outcomes.

It's also unclear to me whether this is a particularly effective measure, given that the linked article doesn't say much about what enforcement measures "countries that have decreased their BAC laws" actually use. Attempting to keep repeat offenders from continuing to drive and doing more enforcement in general seem like more effective measures. Focusing on the number seems like advocating for red-light cameras -- like a great way to drive up revenue for local law enforcement without necessarily having much impact on public safety.
posted by halation at 1:46 PM on January 19, 2018 [25 favorites]


"Getting to Zero" is only going to happen in one of two ways:

Prohibition, or self-driving cars.

A reduction in deaths is a noble goal. A goal of zero isn't attainable so long as we allow people to drink and to drive. It's inevitable that people will combine the activities, and we've seen already what happens when we try to prevent drinking.

Perhaps instead of finding ways to empower the already untrustworthy police and punish a suffering populace, we should invest in public transportation and infrastructure to make driving drunk (or at all) a less appealing endeavor.
posted by explosion at 1:48 PM on January 19, 2018 [23 favorites]


Victoria, Australia has had .05 as the limit for as long as I can remember, and we have no problems with police accurately detecting .05 limits with our breathalyzers.

How would you know if there were problems with the accuracy?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:53 PM on January 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


Yeah. I mean, changing the law is putting the cart a bit before the horse as far as changing the behavior of the law abiding folks who take drinking and driving seriously. Get an education program going trying to change the common knowledge advice from "two drinks and you're ok" down to "only one, or you shouldn't be driving." The people who don't follow that sort of advice.. well... from my experience, those people are way higher than 0.08 when they get behind the wheel.
posted by Zalzidrax at 2:02 PM on January 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


Alleged problems with BAC testing accuracy:
* Accuracy of Alcotest Devices in New Jersey DWI Cases Questioned in Lawsuit
* Breath Test Devices Manipulated To Show Higher BAC Levels.
* The Intoxilyzer 8000, the state's flawed tool in the battle against drunk driving

I'm not saying there is an endemic problem with these tests, but that we shouldn't accept technology without scrutiny.

In my mind, it would warrant changing the BAC limit to .05 if one could point to fatalities caused by drivers that were at .05 .06 or .07; it seems a pretty straightforward test. I hope all this becomes a moot point when our grandchildren gape in wonder at the thought that humans were allowed to drive cars without autonomous functionality.
posted by el io at 2:08 PM on January 19, 2018 [14 favorites]


"only one, or you shouldn't be driving."

Long standing personal guideline: Work (socializing) drinking is ONE drink. (PROTIP: Nurse it and keep getting it topped off with ice for a while, then switch to seltzer.)
posted by mikelieman at 2:08 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm waiting for the day when the ABI starts lobbying against lower BAC limits by pointing out that reducing the limit also causes a reduction in the number of organ donations available. I've already seen that very argument pointed out by a guy who was opposed to self-driving cars/trucks as an existential threat to his job, so I figure it's only a matter of time before industry lobbying groups pick it up too.
posted by mystyk at 2:14 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


My city is currently having a fight where a major street cut down on allowed through traffic and parking to speed up the streetcars. Quite a few bars and restaurants are complaining about this impacting their bottom line. And one line of argument I'm surprised isn't getting more traction is the idea that maybe, just maybe, bars complaining that people can't easily drive to them is a good thing.
posted by thecjm at 2:15 PM on January 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


Prohibition, self-driving cars, or public transportation. Or walkable areas.

One reason walkable neighborhoods become “hip” is because it’s easier to have nightlife in a dense area. And because it’s easier to have a DD when you live near a lot of people.

I’d personally prefer cracking down on offenders before reducing the BAC level. A driver who nearly killed my friend only went to jail for a year, and she’s shown no sign of changing her ways.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 2:17 PM on January 19, 2018 [16 favorites]


Isn't the recommendation you always ask for a blood test anyway?

At the minimum. Some of the hard-nosed lawyers I read have said you should refuse everything because it constitutes giving up your 5th Amendment rights (not to mention 4A). If you don't provide evidence against yourself, you preserve the ability to have the evidence (if not the stop itself) thrown out in court.

This isn't advocacy for drunk driving, it's a defense against bad technology and overreach.
posted by rhizome at 2:17 PM on January 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


As someone living in a jurisdiction that went from .08 to .05, and likes booze (alot) it's better. I had all the standard upthread concern, but after awhile, you get used to it, and accept it's better for everyone. One drink max, or find another way home. I like knowing I'm fine to drive. I like not adding my drinks, subtracting the lunar phase and dividing by the grams of protein in my lunch. Just don't drink anything (except the token show wine you hold) and get used to it.
posted by Keith Talent at 2:17 PM on January 19, 2018 [31 favorites]


thecjm: perhaps the tactical thing for the bars to do is switch from arguing their bottom-line to arguing safety. Higher speeds on downtown roads correspond to more accidents, and worse ones, especially if it's already to some degree a "walkable" area. Add in that bar patrons aren't always the most coordinated when staggering out, and you have an even bigger problem. Though I'd guess the second part might be better left unsaid.
posted by mystyk at 2:21 PM on January 19, 2018


At the minimum. Some of the hard-nosed lawyers I read have said you should refuse everything because it constitutes giving up your 5th Amendment rights (not to mention 4A). If you don't provide evidence against yourself, you preserve the ability to have the evidence (if not the stop itself) thrown out in court.

the states i'm familiar with make refusing any field sobriety test automatic grounds for suspending your license. so yeah you might avoid a DUI but you won't be driving again any time soon.
posted by indubitable at 2:22 PM on January 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


I believe Florida is going to vote on .05. I have no problem with this.
posted by Splunge at 2:22 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Perhaps instead of finding ways to empower the already untrustworthy police and punish a suffering populace, we should invest in public transportation and infrastructure to make driving drunk (or at all) a less appealing endeavor.

Yeah in my experience lots of people drive drunk because there's no other effective way to get home. If you drink more than you intended and leave your car at the bar, you run the risk of a break-in, theft, and/or a parking ticket.

The other option is changing the culture, which in Wisconsin - hahaha no. We have the highest rate of binge drinking in the country (26% of adults reported having 4-5 or more drinks on one occasion in the past month). We are number 46 on the list of states with strict penalties for drunk driving. Your first one is basically a traffic ticket and it's very common to see people with 5 or more offenses in the news after they're arrested yet again.
posted by AFABulous at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


In theory, I'm on board with this, buuuuut this is the US and the question is how will the real-world implementation of this well meaning idea become perverted into something that exploits the minority and working class populations. Anything that requires more vigorous law enforcement is suspect to me in that regard.
posted by dudemanlives at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2018 [23 favorites]


(Does 4 drinks seem low to anyone else, or have I been brainwashed by the culture? Space them out over 4 hours at a party and that does not seem like very much.)
posted by AFABulous at 2:25 PM on January 19, 2018 [14 favorites]


How would you know if there were problems with the accuracy?

Just to be clear, I meant that as "How would one, in general, know this" and not at all as "The fuck do you know?"
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:27 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


the states i'm familiar with make refusing any field sobriety test automatic grounds for suspending your license.

FWIW, there's a difference between refusing compliance and refusing consent. For example, if a cop tells you to open the trunk so they can search, you'll want to think long and hard about whether you want to refuse to *comply*. But even if you do comply, you can legally refuse *consent* and make clear the action is done under protest. That action makes a world of difference in a courtroom, as if it can be determined that the order was unlawful then the evidence must be thrown out. The principle is no less true with BAC testing.
posted by mystyk at 2:28 PM on January 19, 2018


Yeah 4-5 drinks is a binge if you're 11 years old and weigh 65 lbs.


posted by some loser at 2:28 PM on January 19, 2018 [14 favorites]


I believe the NAS report also advises making more expensive and harder to purchase in general. It has a slightly prohibitionist tinge to it, from what I can tell, though the report itself is behind a very expensive paywall so it is hard to know if that characterization is accurate.

I'm all for %0.05!
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:34 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Does 4 drinks seem low to anyone else, or have I been brainwashed by the culture? Space them out over 4 hours at a party and that does not seem like very much.

I think you supplied your own context. My general rule is no more than one per hour, for exactly that reason. The average adult's body can process roughly one drink per hour, so it's certainly not a binge even if it got past 4 drinks.
posted by mystyk at 2:35 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


So, you can download it for free by creating a MyNAP account. Here's the relevant recommendation:

"Recommendation 3-2: State and local governments should take appropriate
steps to limit or reduce alcohol availability, including restrictions on the
number of on- and off-premises alcohol outlets, and the days and hours of
alcohol sales."
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:37 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Japan is actually .03%, not .05%.
In metro areas this is fairly easy b/c of public transportation (not a lot of drivers in Tokyo).
But in more rural areas where driving is the main transportation, it does have a bigger impact on people. Realistically you can't drink much at all without going over the limit, so people either risk it or have designated drivers or walk/bike if possible (my father in law will bike a LONG way to be able to drink, but he's a little more active than the average person).
posted by thefoxgod at 2:45 PM on January 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


My recollection from an article I read a while back in Car & Driver that the distribution of alcohol related accidents is skewed strongly towards the "wasted" grossly intoxicated people and that .08 is already in the long tail of the distribution. I think .05 might be a bridge too far, and more attention should be focused on getting the grossly intoxicated repeat offenders off the road.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 2:48 PM on January 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


The drivers in the news for horrific accidents around me are usually closer to .25 than .05, this seems more like a prohibition thing than safety.

Can't wait for self driving cars though, to make this all moot.
posted by TheAdamist at 2:49 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


My brother lives in Japan and has a car, and his rule is that if he's driving, he doesn't drink at all. That seems to be the norm in Japan.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:52 PM on January 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


my father in law will bike a LONG way to be able to drink

My experience is that biking to drink is not a problem. Biking back after drinking can be problematic and entail walking the bike.
posted by Splunge at 2:58 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


the states i'm familiar with make refusing any field sobriety test automatic grounds for suspending your license. so yeah you might avoid a DUI but you won't be driving again any time soon.

I believe the idea is that this is still cheaper and less-onerous than a DUI conviction on your record.
posted by rhizome at 3:02 PM on January 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


My recollection from an article I read a while back in Car & Driver that the distribution of alcohol related accidents is skewed strongly towards the "wasted" grossly intoxicated people and that .08 is already in the long tail of the distribution. I think .05 might be a bridge too far, and more attention should be focused on getting the grossly intoxicated repeat offenders off the road.

The drivers in the news for horrific accidents around me are usually closer to .25 than .05, this seems more like a prohibition thing than safety.

Just out of interest, how big an inconvenience should it be to oneself before we don't write off the lives taken by milder drink drivers? Statistical impairment shows up at .04. .05 is a gift.

Incidentally, I almost got this question wrong on my written driver's license test when I converted to CA. I almost selected .05 from having it drilled into me for decades until I quickly remembered people can drive drunk in the US.
posted by Talez at 3:05 PM on January 19, 2018 [15 favorites]


his rule is that if he's driving, he doesn't drink at all

Me too. I think about it like drinking during pregnancy. One drink ain't going to hurt, but if there is a problem later, you wouldn't want that cloud of doubt hanging over your head forever. Then again I live in a place that is both walkable and has great public transportation. Oh, and even a service where if you happen to get drunk and you do have your car, you can pay someone else to drive it home for you like a reverse taxi.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:05 PM on January 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


Biking back after drinking can be problematic and entail walking the bike

Yes, ironically while Japan has super strict DUI laws and seems to have much less drunk driving than the US, drunk bicycling is super common (especially in big cities) and is definitely a problem. I mean, it's better than driving a car drunk, but people still get injured sometimes.
posted by thefoxgod at 3:21 PM on January 19, 2018


I weigh as much as Trump allegedly does and it's basically impossible for me to drink fast enough to hit 0.05. I'd have to have 5 drinks in two hours which is at least twice as fast as I normally drink.
posted by octothorpe at 3:21 PM on January 19, 2018


haven't had a drop in ages. the problem for me has been the casual assertion that BAC, BAC-as-determined-by-breathalyzer, and actual impairment for an individual, don't really seem well correlated.

First, self-selection is at work. If you drive erratically or get involved in a collision, *that's* when your data point gets collected.

If i recall my 20s, lots of folks drove safely home while technically over the BAC-limit. But who really knows if that individual's personal capacities and reflexes were impaired. It's a giant, absent statistical pool.

The prima-facea argument that Breathalyzer/BAC works as a god proxy only seems supported by DUI convictions vs MVA fatalities over 30X years. The disincentive of jailtime still has a measurable reduction-effect.

I still see no popular argument of supporting study that if you grab a random dude off the road and apply a BAC, Breathalyzer BAC, relexive-response test, and cognition test, that they each will show equivalent impairment.

/law-stats pedantry
posted by j_curiouser at 3:42 PM on January 19, 2018 [10 favorites]


Biking back after drinking can be problematic and entail walking the bike.

In Germany you can get your driving licence suspended for an extended period for being drunk in charge of a bicycle, like >10 years, plus a fine. And if you're drunk enough you can be sent for psychological testing also.
posted by biffa at 3:49 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


There's a meta study of 112 reviewed studies that found that 51 out of 112 studies determined that detectable cognitive impairment begins at 0.05 BAC or below.

I play online competitive games which pretty much test you at the edge of your ability and I definitely make more mistakes of judgement with even one drink. Mind you, I don't feel like reflexes are affected - it's mainly the processing of information on an instantaneous basis and making a judgement call. For example, approaching an intersection and making the decision whether you can merge safely or not...

The study which was most sensitive to impairment was a flight simulator which required subjects to integrate information about aircraft, traffic, and weather conditions; maneuver the aircraft along a dynamic flight path; and maintain radio communications - and they found impairment beginning at 0.001 BAC. The study with the lowest impairment (no effect at 0.07 BAC) wasn't really measuring impairment, it measured risk taking - number of overtaking maneuvers while driving and lane changes. Anyway, as you can tell, there were a wide variety of studies measuring different things, but the more complex the task, the earlier impairment began.

I personally would not take any alcohol if I'm driving in the next 6 hours.
posted by xdvesper at 4:38 PM on January 19, 2018 [16 favorites]


Utah's switch to 0.05 percent was part of a deal to ease the "Zion Curtain" rules requiring many restaurants to screen the area where they mix/pour alcohol. Now they're talking about going to a tiered penalty system when the legislature holds its 45 day session starting Monday. However, it's unclear who will introduce the bill because it's an election year.

In other Utah liquor news, grocery stores can only carry 3.2 beer, but distributors are phasing it out. Supermarkets are pissed. Meanwhile, the state liquor stores, which sell the "hard" stuff, say they can't cope with the projected increased demand once 3.2 is no longer available in grocery stores. Again, because it's an election year, it's unclear whether any legislator will risk being the one to propose letting grocery stores sell regular beer. Instead, they'll probably wait and see how quickly the distributors pull the 3.2 beer and deal with it in 2019.
posted by carmicha at 4:41 PM on January 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


So, I just got back from dinner, where I had one beer, a Fat Tire, which is 5.2% ABV. This calculator says my BAC is 0.03, which would be illegal in Japan. I mean... that's kind of extreme, right? You really cannot have one beer? I drove home, about 2 miles,and managed not to kill anyone. If I'd had two beers it would be 0.074.
posted by AFABulous at 5:01 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I mean... that's kind of extreme, right? You really cannot have one beer?
I think it's a really different attitude towards driving. In Japan, you aren't entitled to drive. Lots of people don't. So yeah, you can't go out, have a beer, and drive home. If you want to go out and drive, you can't have the beer. If you want to have the beer, you have to find a different way to get home.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:07 PM on January 19, 2018 [32 favorites]


I really wonder what the practical effects are. If the limit is anything other than 0, how can people reliably know if they are in the clear? I’ve never tested my own breath or blood for alcohol. Can I feel the difference?

I guess I should be grateful for my non-drinking spouse, good walkable bars, and public transit where I live.
posted by advicepig at 5:08 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


" . . . such as Austria, Denmark and Japan demonstrate that this is an effective policy. "

Those countries are not good comparisions to most of the United States. The US has higher rates of car ownership and much. much lower rates of public transportation available outside of cities with a large population. There are also large swaths of the United States that have no public transportation of any kind available.

I live in Montana. Only about 50% of our population live in towns that have taxis* or Uber/Lyft. Bus service is available in 8 cities, but only two cities (Bozeman, Missoula) have bus service after 8 p.m. on weekends. When the university students are in town. You still might have to walk a mile home in below freezing weather from the bus stop.

I've drank in Montana for 40 years and have seen a cultural shift towards not driving drunk. But drunk driving still happens because in 50% or more of our towns you have no option that lies between Don't Drink and Don't Go Out.**

Want to lower DUIs? Make Uber/Lyft type services available in every town with more than 500 people. And make it cheap to go 30 miles each way from your house.***


* Taxis are limited in each town, because the amount of taxis you need on Saturday night are in no way supported by the amount of taxis you need on a Tuesday/Wednesday morning. That is why Uber is so popular here, in the seven population centers.

** In most small towns you can sit at home, you can go the the high school sports game or you can go to the bar. There are no other entertainment options after sundown.

*** There are a whole lot of towns in Montana where the next town/place to eat/bar is at least 30 miles.
posted by ITravelMontana at 5:13 PM on January 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


I think that Uber is terrible and Lyft is questionable, but I definitely think it's way easier to convince people of "don't drive" than "don't drink". I used to hear my roommate getting back completely plastered from her weekend excursions, and while she was kind of obnoxious, it really struck me that she was in her early 20s when I was in my mid 30s, and as far as she was concerned, Uber had always been the way you get home from nights out. She was kind of broke, so these trips were usually shared with several other friends who'd crash on our sofa until morning. When I was younger, most of the messaging seemed to be that Drinking Is Bad and that somehow, in order to drink, you had to be able to talk one of your friends into consuming zero alcohol in order to go out. It wasn't even a "pay somebody else ten bucks to come pick you up" thing--the Responsible Adult Thing To Do was supposed to be to socialize with one person painfully sober? I could never understand it. I don't think the drinking is going to go away, but I think the driving is.

I also think more people need to catch on to this idea of social drinking involving sitting at home in front of your laptop with four friends in a Rabb.it room watching something and hanging out. No driving, no expensive ride service, and the booze is cheaper. But then, maybe best that this doesn't catch on because I kind of like Rabb.it still existing.
posted by Sequence at 5:28 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I agree with ArbitraryAndCapricious: it's just different there. And yeah, the answer is you basically cannot drink and drive, in the literal sense of those words.

First time my wife saw me have a glass of wine at a restaurant she was surprised given that I was driving. After I explained that it was quite legal here, she was still like "But is it really OK??". According to online estimate my BAC was probably .01-.02 -- which would even be legal in Japan. But to her, even that seemed like too much, because the attitude is less "how much can I drink and still drive" [as in the US] and more "do not drink and drive, period".
posted by thefoxgod at 5:40 PM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


The US has higher rates of car ownership and much. much lower rates of public transportation available outside of cities with a large population

Thats less different than you may think. Japan's car ownership rate is 75%, US is around 90%. Public transportation in rural/semi-rural Japan is quite bad to nonexistant. There are probably more people with access to good transportation than in the US (only NYC comes close to having something like Kyoto/Osaka/Tokyo/etc levels), but there are still a lot of people without.
posted by thefoxgod at 5:44 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


A driver who nearly killed my friend only went to jail for a year, and she’s shown no sign of changing her ways.

This is far outside what is normal in the United States. Most states, in my experience (in criminal defense) punish DUIs-injuries the same way as intentional-injuries. i.e. if you drive drunk and someone dies, you're charged with murder. If you drive drunk and someone nearly dies, you're charged with assault in the first degree, and looking at 10-20 years in prison at 85% (violent offender) parole eligibility.

So I don't know if it's just hyperbole that your friend nearly died or if it was jurisdiction specific or if the case had some prosecution-weaknesses or what, but that is incredibly uncommon. DUI accidents are treated extremely seriously from a criminal-legal perspective.
posted by likeatoaster at 6:44 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


“While getting to zero alcohol-impaired driving deaths sounds like an overly ambitious goal, it builds on the momentum of Vision Zero, an approach that recognizes that traffic-related fatalities are not just ‘accidents,’ but rather are embedded in a network of events and circumstances with causal links that can be averted,

It does sound ambitious, but given a deterministic universe, I suppose it must in theory be possible to get it to zero, worldwide. I propose: Ban all consumption, sales, and possession of alcohol. Set a speed limit of 5 m/s. Ban all use, sales, and possession of motor vehicles. Pass and vigorously enforce some additional backup laws strictly prohibiting jaywalking, driving, bicycling, the riding of domesticated animals, thinking about alcohol, and all conveyances with more than one wheel. That'll be a start, anyway.
posted by sfenders at 6:48 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


So I don't know if it's just hyperbole that your friend nearly died or if it was jurisdiction specific or if the case had some prosecution-weaknesses or what, but that is incredibly uncommon.

Not even remotely hyperbole. Maybe jurisdiction issues, I don’t know. But until that sort of person is removed from the streets, cracking down on BAC drivers of 0.05 is the least of my priorities.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:14 PM on January 19, 2018


It does sound ambitious, but given a deterministic universe, I suppose it must in theory be possible to get it to zero, worldwide. I propose: Ban all consumption, sales, and possession of alcohol. Set a speed limit of 5 m/s. Ban all use, sales, and possession of motor vehicles. Pass and vigorously enforce some additional backup laws strictly prohibiting jaywalking, driving, bicycling, the riding of domesticated animals, thinking about alcohol, and all conveyances with more than one wheel. That'll be a start, anyway.

This is a ridiculous way of looking at things. While we can't make things perfectly safe, we can be prudent about things and dramatically lower the risk. Sweden has half the death rate of the US per km travelled. Australia is 75% of the United States's fatality rate. Through a mix of better car design enforced by regulatory agencies, better road design by authorities, stricter rules with better enforcement, we have seen the automobile death rates plummet in the Western world. Per mile it's like 1/10th of what it was back in the '70s.

Speeding and drink driving are the lowest hanging fruits now for bringing down the death toll. Attacking both those problems relentlessly will dramatically lower the remaining risk.
posted by Talez at 7:31 PM on January 19, 2018 [18 favorites]


A friend of mine was a crown prosecutor who dealt mainly with drunk drivers and pedestrian fatalities. When the province he worked for dropped the maximum BAC from 0.08, his comment was that 0.08 is more drunk than you realize.

This actually surprised me as common knowledge was that you could blow over the limit and not really be impaired, that it was a technicality that favoured the police. In fact there's a Simpson's scene about this. But an 80kg man would need to drink 6 beers in 2 hours to get to 0.08. I'm a seasoned social drinker and there's no way I would drive in that state.

His other comment was that, yes, these devices are accurate. We know this because wealthy litigious drunk drivers have already worked out the loopholes in the system.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 7:36 PM on January 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


Simpsons scene
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 7:40 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Most states, in my experience (in criminal defense) punish DUIs-injuries the same way as intentional-injuries.

In California you can get away with a misdemeanor (one year sentence max) for killing someone while driving drunk. (Only sometimes though - it can also be charged as a felony with life imprisonment possible). A woman in Washington got six years for killing two people and severely injuring another while blind drunk. One year for nearly-killing someone sounds par for the course. In other states it is an option for the prosecutor to push the more severe DUI murder charges. I think most states have *an option* to punish DUIs as intentional injury or murder, but I'd be surprised if it is the norm to do so.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 7:47 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


This is a ridiculous way of looking at things.

Well yes, it is the absurdity that follows from talking literally someone who's talking and thinking in idealistic hyperbole along the lines of "zero tolerance". There is a level of risk that's acceptable. I don't pretend to know precisely where it is for myself let alone society as a whole, but I do know it's not zero. 0.05, sure, maybe.
posted by sfenders at 7:56 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


@thelonius: good point. One study:

Breathalyzer® and blood-alcohol results from drivers arrested for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated and for related offenses were compared during a two-year period. Four hundred and four pairs of breath- and blood-alcohol results from specimens collected within 1 h of each other were studied. Blood-alcohol concentrations ranged from zero to 0.421% weight per volume (w/v). Breath-alcohol concentrations ranged from zero to 0.44 g/210 L. The mean Breathalyzer result was 0.16 g/210 L. The mean blood-alcohol result was 0.176% w/v. Compared to the blood-alcohol result, Breathalyzer results were lower by more than 0.01 g/210 L 61% of the time, within 0.01 g/210 L 33% of the time, and higher by more than 0.01 g/210 L 6% of the time.

source
posted by craniac at 7:57 PM on January 19, 2018


This thread was unsettlingly more pro drink driving than I expected.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:34 PM on January 19, 2018 [39 favorites]


Please don't overlook the fact that there is an army of attorneys in the US that have their entire legal practice devoted to "defending" those who have been caught DWI. In fact there is no defense, but most times having an attorney, especially one from the same town as the courtroom can mitigate penalties. Why might that be?

In California, a DWI first conviction can easily end up costing the driver $8000-10000, a large chunk of which is attorney's fees. MADD created a brand new cash cow for the lawyers of America. Dropping the BAC is great for business and I for one have a hard time believing it plays no role in the race to zero tolerance.

As marijuana becomes legal they are racing to determine how to catch those driving while on Marijuana, while science struggles to prove there's any impairment to begin with. Driving on Xanax or a whole host of other soporific Rx products are ignored. Road rage in these times is epidemic, and yet, no effort to reign this dangerously irresponsible behavior beyond perhaps the occasional PSA.

Sure many studies can detect impairment at .05% but are they critically impaired vs detecting micro-impairment? More so than the night nurse driving home after a 12 hour shift?
Driving while substantially impaired is indefensible and irrefutably wrong.

The simpler more effective solution to stopping drunk driving is to offer "tipsy taxies." Its cost effective, and supports local tavern businesses and saves lives in front and behind the steering wheel.
posted by Fupped Duck at 8:38 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


posted by likeatoaster : So I don't know if it's just hyperbole that your friend nearly died or if it was jurisdiction specific or if the case had some prosecution-weaknesses or what, but that is incredibly uncommon. DUI accidents are treated extremely seriously from a criminal-legal perspective.

I'm not who you were responding to, but in Texas, a drunk killed an amazing friend of mine, and paralyzed his friend. The drunk was out of jail before he was sober, and he never saw a day of jail time after he was convicted of manslaughter of some variety. Rich, white, socially connected, multiple offenses. No jail time. No murder charges. Just a dead college student, and a kid that will never walk again.

Generally in Texas, it's charged as Intoxicated Manslaughter. If someone has multiple convictions of DUI/DWI and then subsequently kills someone, they can technically be charged with a felony, and thereby a murder, but it's not a common tactic, like you seem to be suggesting.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:43 PM on January 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Re: bars, cars, and how to get home in a big ol' country without public transportation

We usually pick a designated driver, but we're old. Old enough now that if we're planning a night of bar hopping and band seeing and general merriment, I usually book a hotel nearby, so we can just walk, or have the hotel send a car.

But thinking back to my college days, I would totally have paid the equivalent of a taxi fare to have someone bring me *and* my car and my friends home, rather than one of us having to be the sober one annoyed by all the drunk people. Heh.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:48 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


My brother lives in Japan and has a car, and his rule is that if he's driving, he doesn't drink at all. That seems to be the norm in Japan.

I live in Japan and can confirm. Drinking pretty much any amount of alcohol and then driving after is a genuine taboo for most people. The rule of thumb in many Western countries is more like having a drink, or maybe even two, then immediately driving is not a problem. But in Japan it's just not done, and not even really considered. It probably has a lot to do with the "Asian flush" prevalent in something like a third of East Asians.
posted by zardoz at 9:00 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


It will be great when self-driving cars make this issue irrelevant.

With the people I work with, the norm is increasingly that going out for drinks means catching an Uber or Lyft home. It's not as good as self-driving cars, since not everyone does this and I see people peeling out of nearby bars all the time, but it's way better than having to do that fuzzy math (like one drink per hour, but you didn't have lunch today, and now you just shifted from beer to wine, so how many drinks is this anyway?)
posted by Dip Flash at 9:45 PM on January 19, 2018


This actually surprised me as common knowledge was that you could blow over the limit and not really be impaired, that it was a technicality that favoured the police. In fact there's a Simpson's scene about this. But an 80kg man would need to drink 6 beers in 2 hours to get to 0.08. I'm a seasoned social drinker and there's no way I would drive in that state.

Yeah - avoiding coming up with an opinion on nearly any other aspect of this, 0.08 seems distinctly beyond where I'd be comfortable driving. Of course the other side of this is that equal BAC probably does not correspond to equal impairment for everybody - the law just pretends it does because objective tests of impairment are too hard or costly to deploy I guess.
posted by atoxyl at 10:03 PM on January 19, 2018


Worth noting that the .05 BAC limit in Australia* is complemented by a massive ongoing public education campaign that includes not just famously graphic anti-drink driving ads but also ones explaining what a "standard" drink is and how many your body can handle an hour before you reach the limit. I mean this is a subject that is talked about a lot and is drilled into everyone from a very young age these days (one particularly cheery tradition is that the media obsessively tracks the "holiday road death toll" on major holidays).

I worked as a bartender in Australia and found customers (in inner city Melbourne; can't tell you what goes on out Woop Woop) really did count their standard drinks and were very cognizant of their approx. BAC (it helps that bartenders there can also only pour spirits in standard measures; it also helps that Australia has no constitutional barriers to road checkpoints for breathalyzers, so most drinkers out on weekend assume they will be stopped).

By contrast, I have found that the average American is not well informed on this topic, with many I've spoken to having no real grasp on what 0.08 is and how one gets there. When I first moved to the US, I got my alcohol service permit for that state and was pretty shocked when the instructor told us, "You're technically drunk at .07 -- the driving limit here is .08." Most of the course focused on how to not get sued, while the equivalent course in Australia is mostly about the importance of serving standard measures and keeping track of what customers have had.

OTH, Australia is a nanny state and Australians generally like it that way. Americans... not so much.

* for fully licensed drivers -- it's .00 for probationary licenses, which in many states last years; I think the youngest you could drink and drive in Victoria these days, if you got your Ps straight away at 18, is 22?
posted by retrograde at 10:21 PM on January 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


From living in Australia where the limit is 0.05% - it is TERRIFYING that it's apparently legal to tootle around town in the USA with a BAC of 0.07%. Judgement is empirically impaired at that point and anyone saying "nah I'm fine to drive after four drinks" IS USING A DRUNK IMPAIRED PERSON'S JUDGEMENT OF YOUR DRUNK IMPAIRED DRIVING. It is a complete fallacious loop of poor judgement.
posted by chiquitita at 10:30 PM on January 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


I mean I get that it's a bit shit if you live out of town and want to get a few beers and there's no taxi but that doesn't give you the right to risk everyone else's life with drunk idiocy.
posted by chiquitita at 10:32 PM on January 19, 2018 [16 favorites]


AFABulous: " I drove home, about 2 miles,and managed not to kill anyone. "

So it was only a flesh wound?

Seriously though this anecdote means nothing. It isn't even remotely statistically significant. The overwhelming vast majority of 2 mile trips of unimpaired drivers result in no incidents. If impairment of .03 doubled, tripled or quadruped the incident rate one would still expect the vast majority of trips to be incident free. And also if your impairment had resulted in your incarceration, serious injury or death you wouldn't be posting on Metafilter so there is a selection bias at work too.
posted by Mitheral at 11:37 PM on January 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


I mean I get that it's a bit shit if you live out of town and want to get a few beers and there's no taxi but that doesn't give you the right to risk everyone else's life with drunk idiocy.

Well but for most reasonable people in rural areas, they're not teenagers speeding around and hollering with a car full of kids. They're sedately going directly home on a road with nobody else on it. I mean, not to defend drunk driving (I'm really not) but it is a completely different thing than trying to negotiate city traffic which can be attention and skill challenging even in your best condition.

OTOH, in rural Japan your chances of encountering a pedestrian or cyclist are way, way higher.
posted by ctmf at 12:15 AM on January 20, 2018


I pick people up at the back door of the jail in the predawn hours.

"But Uber was 4x surge. I don't have 85 bucks. "

Surge is when you call a taxi. It's cheaper than Uber then and even surge is cheaper than a DUI.

Or you can sleep in your vehicle until surge is over. I've picked up some people who've done that and they were still wasted. I wonder why some people can still weigh that after way too much and some people can't.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 2:06 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Except that you can get a DUI for sleeping in your car.
posted by octothorpe at 4:57 AM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


I don't know about everywhere but here you can avoid that by not having your keys on you. Set them on the engine or in the trunk.
posted by Mitheral at 5:07 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


That's by no means true in every "actual physical control" DUI state, but it's still often passed around as bar folklore. I'd actually advise verifying this, if it is just a thing you have heard. It's also possible that that used to be the law, but that it's been changed.

It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. What's the rationale for considering a drunk person sleeping in their car chargeable with DUI? The only one I can imagine is, it is because they are going to drive the minute they wake up, and they will still be drunk; the current location of the keys doesn't change that.
posted by thelonius at 5:15 AM on January 20, 2018


I'm sure it varies, IANAL and hey cops can arrest you for -ist reasons but all the cases I've heard of once you dig down into the details you find out the keys were in the ignition because the impaired person was supposedly listening to the radio/running the car for heat/adjusting the seat/miles from any location where a person could procure alcohol.

It's not just bar folklore in Canada; it's not hard to find actual lawyers specializing in this sort of law advocating this action.

US example.
posted by Mitheral at 5:57 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


So, I just got back from dinner, where I had one beer, a Fat Tire, which is 5.2% ABV. This calculator says my BAC is 0.03, which would be illegal in Japan. I mean... that's kind of extreme, right? You really cannot have one beer? I drove home, about 2 miles,and managed not to kill anyone. If I'd had two beers it would be 0.074.

Based on that calculator, I'm apparently legal to drive after drinking amounts that in real life make me feel significantly impaired. I had been in the camp of thinking the move to .05 was overkill, but not after looking at those calculator results. (For example, apparently I could have five 12 oz Fat Tires in three hours and still be just under the limit, which is says to me that the limit is set too high.)

Maybe I'm just a lightweight, but my own personal decision point for when to not drive is apparently at a way lower percentage, because that's when I can feel that I am impaired.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:01 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


DUI laws, unfortunately, are one of those things that are hard to Google for, since you typically get just tons of results from lawyers advertising for DUI clients.
posted by thelonius at 6:14 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I had no idea what it takes to get a BAC of. 08, but I'm really surprised by the discussion here. Like, I get that I'm a small woman. If I drink I have one beer, and generally a few hours before I drive(more than 2), and that feels wierd to me when though I know it is totally legal.

I kind of want to be able to measure my own BAC just to know.


Anyway, maybe I'm overly cautious but like 0.08 is like apperently way higher than I thought it was according to the calculator I used.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:21 AM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


DON'T. DRINK. AND. DRIVE.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:32 AM on January 20, 2018 [7 favorites]


You know, if you're sleeping in the back seat, DUI is going to be really hard to prove.

Just sayin'
posted by mikelieman at 6:41 AM on January 20, 2018


in Wisconsin - hahaha no. We have the highest rate of binge drinking in the country (26% of adults reported having 4-5 or more drinks on one occasion in the past month). We are number 46 on the list of states with strict penalties for drunk driving.

Wisconsin is a State that lets you actually kill someone drunk driving and keep your bar card. You can also be a bail jumper and get caught wearing no pants for a drunk driving arrest and keep your bar card.

In Eau Claire the city manager can be drunk and the township rep in the car with him can be equally or more drunk and the female police officer after understanding she pulled over the city manager diffuses the situation by letting the township rep become the driver.

I would not expect the rule of law to improve things.

What will change things is Flo from Progressive having booze sensors added to the rate-encheapener you can willingly submit to VS asking government do things. That and not-drunk robots preventing people who ingest poison from driving.

Once the courts decide robot drivers are the gold standard to judge humans against we'll all be moving to the 5-10K more expensive robot based chauffeur service. And really, isn't that what ya'll wanted anyway - be rich enough to hire someone to drive you around?
posted by rough ashlar at 6:48 AM on January 20, 2018


the female police officer after understanding she pulled over the city manager diffuses the situation by letting the township rep become the driver.

Was she drunk?
posted by thelonius at 6:53 AM on January 20, 2018


DUI laws, unfortunately, are one of those things that are hard to Google for, since you typically get just tons of results from lawyers advertising for DUI clients.

Why doesn't this chain work?

Pick scholar.google.com.
Search caselaw and the state.
Look at a few of the results and refine the search from there.

I don't remember advertising in scholar.google.com caselaw section.
posted by rough ashlar at 6:55 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


if we're planning a night of bar hopping and band seeing and general merriment, I usually book a hotel nearby, so we can just walk, or have the hotel send a car.

But thinking back to my college days, I would totally have paid the equivalent of a taxi fare to have someone bring me *and* my car and my friends home, rather than one of us having to be the sober one annoyed by all the drunk people. Heh.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 12:48 PM on January 20 [+] [!]


This. I travel a lot, drink a lot, and go to a lot of festivals/concerts, and nearly everywhere in the world, this is seen as optimal among even car owners. A nearby hotel is just part of the deal if distances aren't easily walkable or Uberable.

In China, at least the major cities, Didi (the Chinese Uber avatar) offers a "book a designated driver" service where you pay a dude's taxi fees to your location, and he drives you home. It's about $15. Hotels near everywhere are also $15.

In Indonesia, at least Jakarta, where Uber/Gojek/Grab motorbike taxis are a thing (and I can get a ride to the airport for $4!, or $15 if I want 4 wheels and airbags), the drivers pretty universally won't let you on the back of the motorcycle if you look too drunk to keep your balance. A motorbike taxi home is $0.50, across the city is $2, in a 3 or 4-wheel vehicle (pedicabs and cars) is twice that.

In Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Seoul, 24-hour convenience stores and restaurants near subway stops transform into ad-hoc after hours bars slash hotels until the subway opens. Not uncommon to step over clubbers on your way in early in the morning. In Tokyo, izakayas (small neighborhood restaurants/bars where salary men go to drink) with showers are a thing, and 24-hour karaokes are on every block, rooms available by the hour, where they offer pillows. Japan isn't "weird", it just adapts to establishment licensing. In Seoul, which is much less spread out and which has fewer nightlife districts, taxis are disturbingly cheap for a developed country, as are hotels. Hong Kong, well, taxis are between Tokyo and Seoul, hotels are most expensive of all, but massage $15 massage joints with rooms and lounges you can sleep in + heaviest car taxes of anywhere + parks with homeless-friendly benches + night buses + no one looks at you funny if you're drunk at 6am. Hell, they offer you coffee and a sit, if they're open. Given HK's density, something is always open.

In Singapore...fuck Singapore. They punish you for even thinking about getting trashed in public, and every law is designed to make you terrified of doing so. Liquor taxes & taxis make it prohibitively expensive anyway. But, car taxes and public transit during the day make owning a car prohibitively expensive. Rent near anywhere with nightlife is prohibitively expensive. $15 cocktails and $3500/month studio apartments and $15 minimum Uber rides and $50/night hotel rooms. Nobody can afford it and everyone is terrified. I suppose that's one solution to drunk driving, but fuck Singapore. Singapore is mean, angry, jerkhead Hong Kong about this. Singapore is HK's density, but nothing is open. If they are, they don't like drunks.

Bangkok, taxis are just cheap, motorbike taxis and the party doesn't start until midnight anyway. Also the thing I just said about Jakarta. Except for the fact that Jakarta has Singapore-esque liquor taxes and you can't buy alcohol at convenience stores or restaurants. Jakarta adapts with clubs and bars that are more often than not also surprisingly reasonably priced hotels and private karaokes (and also brothels and drug dens, but that's not this issue), all in the same building, and pretty much everywhere not closed after midnight has a liquor license, or barring, street carts have a stash of moonshine or Orang Tua (old man! the brand is "old man"!) under the counter for the asking, 500ml bottles of grape wine (I won't call it red) for $5. Do not believe the overtly Muslim hype, these people drink. And many drive. A country of $5000 cars and cheap gas and not a functioning subway for 250 million people means they do, but I think many, many more, partly due to Jakarta's horrific traffic and Indonesia's horrific roads, just leave the cars at home and take the motorbikes, Ubers, and normal taxis if needed.

Phnom Penh, pedicabs/real cabs, super cheap taxis + Jakarta model. Vietnam anywhere, super cheap taxis + motorcycle taxis. Laos & Burma...lol whut iz laws + Jakarta model. I can't speak for those, only short visits, but don't be annoying or murdery, and most people don't have cars anyway, and a drunk is just a drunk. Ignore or send away.

Bali, well, motorcycle booze deaths are just kind of a known quantity. Much like the US, population density factors heavily into the lack of alternatives to driving. This is also a factor in other parts of Indonesia, but thankfully, the Jakarta model applies to most of the country, so you're only driving drunk if you really, really can't see your way to shelling out the $10-20 to sleep it off at the club. Also, poverty and low cost of living means affordable and plentiful taxis. By far, the most expensive part of your night is the drinks.

In all the places I've mentioned, public drunkenness might or might not be a crime, but I've certainly been guilty (sometimes, like, not at all in a good way), and never been punished or even taken advantage of. I can't even recall a point I've been yelled at, although I feel like it must have happened... Usually I'm humored and offered a bench or table to lay on, and everyone is happy to let me blow my drunk cash.

My point, if I have one, is that there are ways to cut down on drunk driving, indeed driving at all, without affecting alcohol and drinking. I'm all for punishing people who drive drunk, but the US seems to have a cultural issue with it in addition to the usual infrastructure problems. Oh and those seem rooted in culture too. I'm American but I've pretty much given up the US as a place to live (which factors into my bias I guess?), but in doing so, owning a car disappeared from my life as well. I used to (and still mostly do) live in Beijing, and there, owning a car...why? Beijing doesn't even do freestanding houses. But traveling so much last year and now, living for months at a time in places where actual freestanding houses and yard plots exist, it's like...the question is still why? , Sorry, but there are deeper problems than drinking and driving in the US. Globally, we're the worst at housing and vice laws and nightlife.

Except Singapore.

EDIT: Also, sorry to abuse edit window, but context for me - I'm a freelancer so no office or I'm required to be at, and I have a driver's license but non car, but I don't drive, ever, unless it's driving someone else's car for them home for them, often in places where I'm not actually authorized to drive. My lifestyle allows having no car, privilege etc., but take that for what it's worth.
posted by saysthis at 7:01 AM on January 20, 2018 [9 favorites]


This thread was unsettlingly more pro drink driving than I expected.

It's only fair. Americans are supposed to wait until they're 21 before they can have a beer. That's a lot of years of drinking to catch up on.
posted by flabdablet at 7:05 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Americans are supposed to wait until they're 21 before they can have a beer. That's a lot of years of drinking to catch up on.

Don't forget the 1st armed American rebellion was over booze. The result was the losers moving to locations were the new, more prefect union, didn't have territories.

And that attitude got distilled into the local and county brewing pot of culture to be the observed wort of unsettlingly more pro drink driving that's been noticed.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:15 AM on January 20, 2018


I'm pretty sure that a very small percentage of Americans actually wait until they're 21 to start drinking.
posted by octothorpe at 7:16 AM on January 20, 2018


Mythbusters did a thing where they compared a drunk driver to a sleep deprived driver. The sleep deprived driver was actually more impaired as measured by results on a driving test, and when you consider that FPP earlier in the week here about how none of us get proper sleep... IIRC, the drunk driver was right around .08, which I think is the legal limit in CA where they did the test.

Not excusing drunk driving, just pointing out that if everybody in the US quitting drinking tomorrow it probably wouldn't reduce the percentage of impaired drivers on the road as much as you might think.
posted by COD at 7:21 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


This thread was unsettlingly more pro drink driving than I expected.

It's only fair. Americans are supposed to wait until they're 21 before they can have a beer. That's a lot of years of drinking to catch up on.
posted by flabdablet at 11:05 PM on January 20 [+] [!]


Indonesia too. The US is not unique in this, but globally it is in the minority (and from what I can tell, we're the ones who started it, usual US half-measure that it is...). Anecdotally, I met a 15-year old in a huge club last night. The US does one thing right, and that's enforcing ID laws at liquor establishments.

I have nothing to extrapolate from this except that Indonesia doesn't do it as well.
posted by saysthis at 7:22 AM on January 20, 2018


There are much bigger fish to fry, at least in most US states, related to drunk-driving laws before we get down into the weeds about .08 versus .05.

A horrendous number of drunk-driving wrecks and in particular fatalities are caused by repeat offenders. About 30% of DUI convictions are of repeat offenders, and this subgroup of people—who are, by definition, not dissuaded by the current BAC standard or its associated punishments—have about a 4x chance of causing a fatality than a non-repeat DUI offender. (Data, although it's old; I don't think the situation has improved markedly, although Uber likes to take some credit.)

In lots of places, although a DUI isn't a slap on the wrist—a lot has been done to make it very intentionally financially crippling—it doesn't stop you from driving. Hell, in a lot of cases there isn't even a full 30-day suspension, because you can immediately request a hardship exemption and are allowed to drive again, at least to go to work (and once you're behind the wheel, what's another stop on the way home?). And while I think this is probably a bad idea, it's not hard to see the argument, either: in lots of parts of the US, not having a car for 30 days is functionally the same as house arrest. People can't maintain jobs through it, and they're flatly not going to obey it, and law enforcement doesn't have the resources to enforce willful non-compliance. Unless you put people in jail for the full suspension period, they're just going to drive, and judges and prosecutors largely realize that.

If you could get the repeat DUI offenders off the road, the people who everyone in their local community basically knows are going to drunk-drive over and over again until they kill someone or themselves (and in most rural and exurban communities that I've ever lived in, these people exist and are pretty well-known), you'd take a huge chunk out of the number of road fatalities immediately. And you'd do it without the knock-down-drag-out argument over whether you're suddenly prohibiting upstanding citizens from having two beers with dinner, which is a cultural shift that I don't think you're likely to win anytime soon.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:24 AM on January 20, 2018 [16 favorites]


I'd love to have an app that cross references these threads with "phone use while driving" threads. People freaked out when I suggested that phones automatically lock when moving faster than a walking speed. It would completely solve the problem of drivers looking at their phones and eliminate crashes caused by phones (yes, I know, there are other distractions). But the ability of passengers and transit riders to check Facebook is more important than saving lives, I guess.

tl;dr I feel like a lot of people who are in the camp of "not even one drink" are fine with technologically allowing people to drive with phones, even though that's a far easier problem to solve.
posted by AFABulous at 7:36 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


tl;dr I feel like a lot of people who are in the camp of "not even one drink" are fine with technologically allowing people to drive with phones, even though that's a far easier problem to solve.

I keep driving DND on my phone and I have spent hundreds getting wireless stuff into my car so I don’t have to fuss with it. The only time I interact with my phone in my car is a complete stop with the parking brake on.
posted by Talez at 7:42 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


My point, if I have one, is that there are ways to cut down on drunk driving, indeed driving at all, without affecting alcohol and drinking.

The places you list above are far denser in terms of population than many parts of the US, though, and labour costs (and licensing requirements) prevent the level of low-cost taxi saturation you're describing, which is what makes that system work. Uber/Lyft are altering the dynamics, slowly, but still, in a lot of parts of the US, there aren't any cabs. Or if there are, and you try and get one, it's going to take an hour or so for the cab to show up after you call. (If the cab shows up. Which it might not. And then you restart the whole process.) If it does show, it will certainly cost you more than $15-$20, when it gets there. And it may insist you pay in cash. If you're even a remotely manageable distance from home, you'd be better off walking... but many places in the US have no sidewalks. None of that is a pro-drunk-driving argument, but it's pretty clear to see how such a situation is going to lead to increased drunk driving. And nothing much about that situation gets changed by dropping the legal limit.

Except that you can get a DUI for sleeping in your car.

You can indeed. I was out with friends over the holidays, and one of the party wanted to pop out to the designated driver's car to charge his phone for a bit, since there were no outlets at the table and it was about to die. Everyone at the table instantly went "ABSOLUTELY NOT," since that simple action, in the parking lot of a drinking establishment, can be enough to get you into trouble if a patrol happens by. Putting keys in the trunk may or may not be helpful, depending on jurisdiction and a fair few other variables. It's certainly far better than driving in that state, from a public-safety perspective, but it may not help you much from a legal-wellbeing perspective.
posted by halation at 7:54 AM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


The places you list above are far denser in terms of population than many parts of the US, though, and labour costs (and licensing requirements) prevent the level of low-cost taxi saturation you're describing, which is what makes that system work.

Amen a million times over. The USA should understand that the suburban lifestyle has costs, and drunk though I may be, the things we sacrifice aren't just binge drinking. Sometimes its lives. Our species is social and we're supposed to live on top of each other!!!!

Except that you can get a DUI for sleeping in your car.

You can indeed. I was out with friends over the holidays, and one of the party wanted to pop out to the designated driver's car to charge his phone for a bit, since there were no outlets at the table and it was about to die. Everyone at the table instantly went "ABSOLUTELY NOT," since that simple action, in the parking lot of a drinking establishment, can be enough to get you into trouble if a patrol happens by. Putting keys in the trunk may or may not be helpful, depending on jurisdiction and a fair few other variables. It's certainly far better than driving in that state, from a public-safety perspective, but it may not help you much from a legal-wellbeing perspective.
posted by halation at 11:54 PM on January 20 [+] [!]


What a horrible, pointless, avaricious, nasty thing to even have to think about. Sorry to keep harping on 'car culture", but only the fact that people need cars to get around enables this. The more feet are disadvantaged, the more insane things like this happen. Police seek rent, headlines at 11. Ugh. Good you guys were smart, but never lose perspective about why you have to be smart in the first place.
posted by saysthis at 8:35 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Or you can sleep in your vehicle until surge is over. I've picked up some people who've done that and they were still wasted. I wonder why some people can still weigh that after way too much and some people can't.

No, you can’t sleep in your vehicle. That means you were in your car while in possession of your keys. That’s enough to get picked up in some places.
posted by parliboy at 9:27 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm wondering how many women would feel comfortable sleeping in their cars. I can't imagine doing that.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:42 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


It wasn't comfortable, but I slept it off in my car once. Party I was at got way bigger than expected after I'd already had too much, and it seemed like the best out of a few not so great options.
posted by ghost phoneme at 11:02 AM on January 20, 2018


sfenders:
Well yes, it is the absurdity that follows from talking literally someone who's talking and thinking in idealistic hyperbole along the lines of "zero tolerance". There is a level of risk that's acceptable. I don't pretend to know precisely where it is for myself let alone society as a whole, but I do know it's not zero. 0.05, sure, maybe.
I'm not sure if you misread or you're being willfully obtuse. The section you're responding to is about Vision Zero, which is working towards zero traffic deaths, not zero tolerance. A big part of Vision Zero is based around understanding that mistakes are going to happen, and engineering the built environment so that mistakes are not fatal. E.g. dropping the speed limit on a road does little unless you also narrow the road so people will naturally drive slower.

Getting away from the physical side of things, if you're lacking in public transportation, maybe the local government can subsidize taxis at key times. Maybe that's paired with enforcement measures, but hardly any Vision Zero advocates start by thinking on the enforcement side of the equation.

Long term, building up the public transportation infrastructure everywhere will reduce traffic deaths and contribute to the goal.

I'm responding to something way upthread by now, but it's important: Vision Zero is worthwhile. Whether or not you think it's possible to get to zero traffic deaths, it's certainly possible to do a lot better than the US is doing right now. Don't confuse it with repeated failed zero tolerance enforcement techniques while also mocking the idea of zero fatalities as a goal. That's hideous. Zero fatalities should be the goal everywhere, in all things. Take it seriously enough and it's possible to make great strides.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:13 PM on January 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


No, you can’t sleep in your vehicle. That means you were in your car while in possession of your keys. That’s enough to get picked up in some places.

Just to reinforce this, if you've been drinking you absolutely can be convicted of DUI for simply being in a vehicle with the keys whether or not there is any evidence you had operated or planned to operate the vehicle. (Assuming the vehicle is on a public road.)

Some people try to get around this by hiding the keys somewhere nearby and then sleeping it off. The effectiveness of this tactic depends on a bunch of factors.

Personally I don't see a problem with a 0.05 standard. Being able to drive after having a couple drinks is not a right. Why would anyone think it is?
posted by Justinian at 2:12 PM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


As you can see in this wikipedia list virtually every country in the world has a 0.05 standard or less, with very few exceptions.

The right to drive while drinking is one of those "American exceptionalisms" similar to the right to carry around guns. Most people around the world consider the American view on these subjects to be bizarre but seem to be stubbornly baked into the American DNA.
posted by JackFlash at 2:29 PM on January 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


Of course the other side of this is that equal BAC probably does not correspond to equal impairment for everybody

That's true, but I think having the alcohol tolerance to not be intoxicated after 6 beers in 2 hours (0.08), or the equivalent for your weight, is quite rare. But maybe I'm overlooking alcoholics.

3.75 in 2 hours (0.05) is of course a lower threshold. That has been the limit for a few years where I live, and it's 0.04 in the very rural next province over. But I haven't heard of people being unfairly arrested because of it.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 3:03 PM on January 20, 2018


But maybe I'm overlooking alcoholics.

"Your Honor, I'm a serious alcoholic, and I'm not impaired at all to drive at .12% BAC, so I move for dismissal" has not done well at all in court, as a defense.
posted by thelonius at 3:05 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


...I suggested that phones automatically lock when moving faster than a walking speed. It would completely solve the problem of drivers looking at their phones and eliminate crashes caused by phones (yes, I know, there are other distractions). But the ability of passengers and transit riders to check Facebook is more important than saving lives, I guess.

tl;dr I feel like a lot of people who are in the camp of "not even one drink" are fine with technologically allowing people to drive with phones, even though that's a far easier problem to solve.


That doesn't seem remotely like an easier problem to solve? "Just ban alcohol," seems about as simple, and if it's lives you're worried about, then it has a much bigger impact beyond just driving. Still, I kinda love the idea of getting mad at some random transit rider checking their damn Facebook and blaming them for road fatalities.
posted by ODiV at 4:09 PM on January 20, 2018


"Just ban alcohol"

Because that worked so well in the 1920s in the US? It would be far worse this time, as the technology to brew / distill your own is so much better.
posted by COD at 4:22 PM on January 20, 2018


Vision Zero, which is working towards zero traffic deaths, not zero tolerance.

You quibble with that, and yet have no problem with the man quoted as saying that accidents are never really 'accidents', since in every case they could have been avoided if only one thing or another had been different? It's not just the impossible goal or the preposterous title of Vision Zero that set me off, it was the pseudo-metaphysical rhetoric used to promote it, and to justify the precise figure of zero. Worthy as the man or the organization may otherwise be, I reserve the right to be dismissive of the idea that eliminating from the world all possibility of deaths by road traffic is in any way a possible or meaningful goal at this time in history, even if everyone gives up their cars and uses public transportation exclusively.

It is a consequence of physics, and roads, and humanity, and having this many billions of people in the world, that some are going to die that way. All the rest will die some other way. I am not personally unaquainted with the disastrous harm done by road accidents, and am in favor of having fewer of them, but some things about the world you cannot change no matter how vehemently you insist that the governance of our laws and customs and transportation should have zero tolerance -- excuse me -- should allow zero of them to happen.

Pretending otherwise is exactly the kind of overblown rhetoric of public safety that's used to justify all the more disreputable kinds of "Zero Tolerance" you were thinking of. It does injury to politics and its outcomes, to sanity, to the quality of public discourse, to reason itself, and they ought to knock it off.
posted by sfenders at 4:27 PM on January 20, 2018


Yes, and? I feel like maybe you read the bit you quoted, but literally nothing around it?
posted by ODiV at 4:27 PM on January 20, 2018


But the ability of passengers and transit riders to check Facebook is more important than saving lives, I guess.

LOL - best what about ism I've seen in a long time, ten points! The technical limitations of that idea make it laughable on its own, even without pulling in whether or not it's a *good* idea.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 4:30 PM on January 20, 2018


I feel like maybe you read the bit you quoted, but literally nothing around it?

You want *all* my irrelevant opinions? Okey, responding to the bits around it: I'm just naturally obtuse. Vision Zero seems to have some good ideas, and I'll take your word for it that they do some useful stuff. I've seen for myself that dropping speed limits beyond a certain point doesn't change the speed of traffic by much, but does increase the difference in speed between vehicles.

My personal suspicion is that local governments in many developed countries would do better to drop some of the typical rules that make taxi service expensive and inaccessible, as illuminated (whatever their other flaws) by Uber, rather than subsidize them. Public transportation does seem like a better idea, where it's practical. If a bus went past my house more than twice a day I'd use them more often.

Of course it's possible to better in the US, and practically everywhere. Having debates about the means by which it's done is important, and I'll leave you all to it.
posted by sfenders at 4:38 PM on January 20, 2018


Not you, sfenders.
posted by ODiV at 4:40 PM on January 20, 2018


(you'll see we posted within the same minute)
posted by ODiV at 4:41 PM on January 20, 2018


Oh, sorry... got carried away with my own rhetoric I guess. It can happen to anyone.
posted by sfenders at 4:42 PM on January 20, 2018


Of course it's possible to better in the US, and practically everywhere. Having debates about the means by which it's done is important, and I'll leave you all to it.

I mean it's not like every other western country in the world has significantly less deaths per billion km but it just wouldn't be American Exceptionalism if people didn't die pointlessly for the pride in doing things the shitty way out of obstination and spite.
posted by Talez at 4:50 PM on January 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


Slander! Base slander! The US does better than Belgium!
posted by Justinian at 5:56 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Generally in Texas, it's charged as Intoxicated Manslaughter. If someone has multiple convictions of DUI/DWI and then subsequently kills someone, they can technically be charged with a felony, and thereby a murder, but it's not a common tactic, like you seem to be suggesting.

A couple of anecdotes about individuals in like 2 states (I saw California and Texas) does not render something "not a common tactic." Especially when you all seem to be using anecdotes of rich, well-connected, white people with a direct line to prosecutorial discretion.

Hundreds/thousands of poor people and people of color spend years of their lives in prison all over the country for DUI-accident cases, including first DUIs where an accident causes injury to another driver. I'm sorry if that is an uncomfortable fact for some people here, but a few anecdotes from one or two states does not change it.
posted by likeatoaster at 6:41 PM on January 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


Also I'm not trying to die on the DUI hill, but it seems every time anything related to criminal justice is mentioned to people here on metafilter, the response is distressingly the same. Several people chiming in to talk about how they once knew of some rich white people who got away with everything and faced no consequences for their actions, and thus all the laws need to be harsher. Without even lip service to the fact that the poor people and people of color in this country are bearing the brunt of their short-sided policies developed out of a backlash against the people who run this country who will get away with whatever they want regardless of how many years legislators enable poor people to be incarcerated for. It doesn't seem like too much to ask for well-meaning, thoughtful people to think about who they are impacting before they advocate for increasingly tough-on-crime policies, and yet here we are.
posted by likeatoaster at 6:46 PM on January 20, 2018 [14 favorites]


The US does better than Belgium!

To be fair, Belgium has beer.
posted by flabdablet at 7:07 PM on January 20, 2018


To be fair, Belgium has beer.

Yeah well here in the US beer is like sex in a canoe.
posted by Talez at 7:22 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


I have a weird perspective on this, because I'm a lifelong American, grew up in the car-dependant suburbs, but lived most of my adult life in New York City, now back in the car-dependant suburbs, and let me tell you, the way most Americans get around terrifies the fuck out of me. I remember going out after leaving NYC and saying to friends "yeah, people go to bars, then get in their car, and just.. drive home. And this is normal."

America may be a deeply divided nation, but on any matter to do with cars or driving, any random sampling probably skews 90% to irrationally defending the status quo around any aspect of driving.
posted by Automocar at 9:48 PM on January 20, 2018 [7 favorites]


Yeah well here in the US beer is like sex in a canoe.

You could probably stand to update your joke by a couple decades. I mean, not that it's a direct comparison (though it's hard to create a better way to say "There's more out there than you know of"), but the US has more local breweries than the entire European continent. Something around 1 in 3 breweries in the world are independent & American by this point.
posted by CrystalDave at 9:59 PM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


If you would like to argue against anecdotal evidence, please feel free to do so by providing data rather than telling us that you said so.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 12:29 AM on January 21, 2018


If you drink and drive, you’re a bloody idiot. Drowsy drivers die. Buckle up or suffer the consequences.

These are hammered into our psyche here – especially in Victoria – from our teenage years. As mentioned above, the culture here is to watch your drinks. Having the police breath test every driver coming out of the city in all six lanes reinforces the fact that it’s only time before you’re nicked.

As for population density being an reason, checked a map of Australia lately? A tenth of the population in an area roughly the same as the lower states. It’s an excuse, not a reason.
posted by antipodes at 12:57 AM on January 21, 2018 [10 favorites]


Quick(ish) montage of the ads I grew up with from the TAC. They stick in your head.
posted by antipodes at 1:07 AM on January 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


CrystalDave: "Something around 1 in 3 breweries in the world are independent & American by this point."

Bud and Miller have been declining fairly rapid so these numbers are a bit out of date but a few years ago (2013)
Bud Light accounts for nearly as much market share as all the other non-top-10 domestic beers combined. Lumped together, the beers ranked six through 10 also account for a smaller market share than Bud Light. .
7 of the 10 ten beers in 2013 were light beers including positions 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 10. The American market is light beer and the top brewery sells a lot of beer relative to small craft brewers.

TL;DR: sex-canoe beer dominates the American market by far.
posted by Mitheral at 4:54 AM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Still, trotting out that sad old joke about American beer in 2018 ignores that huge rise in good beer that happened here since the first time I heard that joke (probably around 1978).
posted by octothorpe at 6:42 AM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


TL;DR: sex-canoe beer dominates the American market by far.

Given the amount of driving after drinking that happens, there is an upside to the popularity of light beer.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:10 AM on January 21, 2018


Given the amount of driving after drinking that happens, there is an upside to the popularity of light beer.


That's kind of a dangerous idea; light beers are usually only about 20% less alcoholic than standard American lagers. Bud is about 5% and Bud Light is 4.2% so you're still going to be pretty impaired after a six of Bud Light.
posted by octothorpe at 8:08 AM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


I've always wondered how many drunk driving accidents are caused by people who are attempting to drive safely, but who can't manage that anymore, like they can't stay in the lane, they are seeing double, they can't react in time; vs. people flat out driving recklessly while also drunk (like the kid passing the truck in the TAC ad, or the Raleigh, NC doctor who killed a woman 10 years or so ago while driving 80 in a 45 zone, after a day drinking at the country club). Where I live, the law does acknowledge this difference, in a system of mitigating and enhancing factors at sentencing for DUI. A collision is of course is a very severely sentence-enhancing factor; the system applies in practice only to people who got arrested, at a relatively low BAC, before that happened.

So many people seem to think it's like an essential part of their identity to speed, change lanes unsafely, etc, and they won't modify that for anything - rain, snow, ice, having felony weight of drugs in the car, being drunk or high.
posted by thelonius at 8:20 AM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]


A couple of anecdotes about individuals in like 2 states (I saw California and Texas) does not render something "not a common tactic." Especially when you all seem to be using anecdotes of rich, well-connected, white people with a direct line to prosecutorial discretion.

I am honestly bewildered about where you are getting any of this. My friend was in neither California nor Texas, and the woman who nearly killed him was an impoverished African-American who bounced between family members during her childhood, as her lawyer played up during the trial for sympathy. The sentence the judge gave her was allegedly quite harsh.

There are crimes for which lives are meaninglessly ruined. This is not one of them. She deserved to stay in prison, and she does not deserve your sympathy.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:09 AM on January 21, 2018


That's kind of a dangerous idea; light beers are usually only about 20% less alcoholic than standard American lagers. Bud is about 5% and Bud Light is 4.2% so you're still going to be pretty impaired after a six of Bud Light.

Really I was joking, but if someone is going to be driving I'd rather they were drinking Bud Light at 4.2% than an IPA at 6% or a triple at over 10% (assuming that they don't compensate by drinking twice as much of the Bud Light, of course).
posted by Dip Flash at 11:23 AM on January 21, 2018


(assuming that they don't compensate by drinking twice as much of the Bud Light, of course).

Unfortunately, because Bud Light and its friends goes down like water, that is exactly what tends to happen. I can nurse an IPA for an hour, I can 't make a Yuengling last more than about 20 minutes.
posted by COD at 11:45 AM on January 21, 2018


In Germany, bars and restaurants usually have a free breathalyzer that you can use to check yourself. In France, cars have to have a pack of disposable breath test strips. I've never seen either of these in the US even once.
posted by miyabo at 2:22 PM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


I've seen breathalyzers at a few bars in the US. They sometimes turn things into a competition for who can blow the highest. But you weren't getting on the road if you blew too high, so probably still a net good?
posted by ghost phoneme at 7:35 AM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


hands-free electronic interaction is as efficacy-limiting as BAC and sleep deprivation. yeah, i know, i'll dig up the cite.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:35 AM on January 22, 2018


This probably isn't a great allocation of resources. If the goal is reduced fatalities, as has been noted, we're kinda already there w/r/t impaired driving, because the lion's share is due to hammered people, not "I had two glasses of wine in an hour" people.

Making a 0.05 DUI the same as a .08 or .10 seems draconian and, well, more about prohibition than real safety, and will (as with any such crackdown) disproportionately impact the poor.
Speeding and drink driving are the lowest hanging fruits now for bringing down the death toll. Attacking both those problems relentlessly will dramatically lower the remaining risk.
Well, maybe. Deaths from both activities are more likely for more extreme offenses. You will never achieve perfect compliance for either. Risk will bottom out, and further enforcement -- say, to push for absolutely 0% BAL -- will cost a lot more and produce nebulous benefit.
What's the rationale for considering a drunk person sleeping in their car chargeable with DUI?
Because cops.
posted by uberchet at 3:27 PM on January 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


The limit in Australia was 0.08 when I was 18: I could legally drink three or four beers and drive my deathtrap musclecar on the streets. 0.05 feels significantly safer and I think we'll probably go lower still, as autonomous vehicles make it clear that it’s the bag of meat that’s the weak link in automotive safety.
posted by michaelhoney at 2:51 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


The danger is the notion that something "feels" safer.
it’s the bag of meat that’s the weak link in automotive safety
...and not necessarily the alcohol.
posted by uberchet at 6:45 AM on January 25, 2018


What about mobile phones?
What about driver aggression?
What about poor driver training?
What about cars unsafe by design?
What about poor line marking?
What about terrible intersection design?

Funny how these kinds of objection often seem to crop up. But the thing is, driving drunk is orthogonal to all of them. People drive drunk and distract themselves with texts. People drive drunk and aggressively. People drive drunk and badly trained in unsafe cars through terrible intersections with awful line markings.

And of course all of these other factors ought to be improved, but the existence of none of them is any reason to remain inactive on drunk driving. Discouraging people from driving while impaired - via the two pronged approach of enforcement of a low but still accurately measurable driver BAC, plus an effective public awareness campaign as ably demonstrated by Victoria's Transport Accident Commission (our mandatory public insurer) - has a proven record of substantially lowering the road fatality and injury rate. Given the experience here, implementing similar things elsewhere ought to be a no-brainer, and I'm at a loss to understand why it's even controversial in the US.

To be fair, I find the US baffling on many, many fronts.
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think it's been clearly stated why folks find pushing the threshold further down to be problematic.

Again, though: is this really the best place to put what resources we have on hand to improving auto safety?

I don't think it's clear that it is, especially given that in the US giving the police additional power to harass people typically results in violence against minorities.
posted by uberchet at 11:13 AM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


in the US giving the police additional power to harass people typically results in violence against minorities.

Same in Australia, though admittedly not to such an extent. And obviously every country has to adopt police procedure adapted to local conditions; our traffic police are far, far, far less likely to encounter an armed driver than yours, which reduces tension all round and gives our police less of a siege mentality. But given all that, could you explain to me how altering the BAC level required to trigger further action from 0.08 to 0.05 would actually translate to an "additional power to harass" where you live?
posted by flabdablet at 4:46 PM on January 27, 2018


If the goal is reduced fatalities, as has been noted, we're kinda already there w/r/t impaired driving, because the lion's share is due to hammered people, not "I had two glasses of wine in an hour" people.

Experience in other countries suggests that this is quite probably not as true as it sounds. It's super easy to imagine a hammered person causing a fatal, but "lion's share" doesn't follow from that. Do you have a reliable source for that stat?
posted by flabdablet at 4:51 PM on January 27, 2018


There's this: NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) report (PDF)
Among the 10,265 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities in 2015, 67 percent (6,865) were in crashes in which at least one driver in the crash had a BAC of .15 g/dL or higher.
So I guess it depends how you define "lion's share."

(0.15 would be 9 beers in 4 hours for a 180 lb male.)
posted by AFABulous at 6:51 PM on January 27, 2018


As big as I am, I'd have to chug a 12-pack in four hours to get to 0.15. I have no idea how you could do that, I'd be sound asleep long before I got there.
posted by octothorpe at 7:51 PM on January 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Thanks, AFABulous.

The information sheet you linked defines an alcohol-impaired driver as one with a BAC over .08, and notes that such drivers account for 29% of fatals. So if we agree to define a hammered driver as one with a BAC over .15, hammered drivers accounted for 67% of 29% = 19% of all fatals and drivers administratively defined as impaired but not hammered accounted for another 10%.

Since it is indisputably the case that physical impairment cuts in at a rather lower BAC than .08, physically though not administratively alcohol-impaired drivers will also have accounted for another share of fatals in addition to those the sheet is talking about. It wouldn't actually take all that many to make fatalities involving physically impaired, non-hammered drivers match or even outnumber those involving hammered drivers.

So until I have access to some actual BAC numbers for all drivers involved in fatals, I'm still inclined to treat a claim that the lion's share of the alcohol-impaired ones were hammered as truthy rather than true.

There is also no doubt in my mind that alcohol-impaired driving is a sizeable risk definitely worth allocating resources to tackling. Here in Victoria, decades of dedicated work on making drink-driving culturally unacceptable have cut road deaths involving drivers with BAC over .05 in half: 38% of all fatals in 1987, 19% in 2016.

That's a 19% reduction in total lives lost in car crashes per year. If we'd started where the US is now (which our 38% at >.05 vs your 29% at >.08 plausibly suggests we roughly did), that's a reduction equivalent to persuading all your hammered drivers to take the bus instead.
posted by flabdablet at 8:27 PM on January 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think the point is, before we expend a lot of political capital and further degrade citizen/police relationships and respect for the law by slugging it out changing 0.08 BAC to 0.05 BAC, maybe we should look at some of the really, really low-hanging fruit, like those people who didn't just have a glass or two of wine with dinner, but a couple of fucking bottles.

As I posted in an earlier comment, in addition to the data showing the large percentage of fatalities caused by people who are really, really impaired, there's also a disproportionate number of fatalities caused by repeat DUI offenders.

Working on those two groups—who almost certainly overlap, and are engaging in behaviors that most people already find reprehensible—would make the roads immediately safer. It should be a comparatively easy win.

There is a limited budget for law enforcement within what revenue people are willing to raise and expend on it, limited time during legislative sessions to consider changes to laws, limited trust that people have in law enforcement, limited tolerance that people have for top-down behavior modification via legal coercion—there's absolutely a cost-benefit that needs to be run when we're looking at how to apportion resources towards social problems and particularly when considering trying to solve problems by making things illegal. Nobody is disagreeing that DUI fatalities are a problem worth working on, but I'm not convinced that just tightening the BAC screws is necessarily the clear next step.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:20 PM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


[C]ould you explain to me how altering the BAC level required to trigger further action from 0.08 to 0.05 would actually translate to an "additional power to harass" where you live?

Because at 0.05, the behavior suggesting that a "drunk driver" may be behind the wheel starts looking a lot more like the kind of ordinary sloppy handling or minor error--making a wide turn, parking crooked, etc.-- that happen all the time, get routinely ignored by law enforcement and may not even be memorable. Giving cops even more defensible reasons, especially since drunk driving is so potent in our society, to selectively pull people over and then concoct reasons for searches, claims of resisting, etc. won't go well for POCs.
posted by carmicha at 7:57 AM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


Here in Victoria, drivers can be pulled over for a random roadside breath test with no other cause.

Obviously that's not going to work in the US given the widespread unprofessionalism of your police, but I can see no reason at all why the existing signs of drunk driving that already trigger being stopped and breathalyzed in the US would need to be modified in any way at all to account for a change from .08 to .05. The only result of such a change would be that of those who are stopped, a higher proportion would fail their breath test.

Or are you suggesting that police would widen their visible-signs-of-DUI criteria in order to push the proportion of failed breath tests back down to about where it is already? That would involve quite a substantial increase in the total number of drivers pulled over. Do your police actually have enough time to harass and intimidate more people than they already do in any given shift?

Not trying to be argumentative here; just genuinely curious to learn.
posted by flabdablet at 2:49 PM on January 31, 2018


As an American with some awareness of how police treat white and non-white people differently, I hazard that carmicha is suggesting that police would disproportionately focus on non-white drivers who did things like make a wide turn, park crookedly, etc.
posted by Lexica at 3:58 PM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


As big as I am, I'd have to chug a 12-pack in four hours to get to 0.15. I have no idea how you could do that, I'd be sound asleep long before I got there.

alcoholism
posted by thelonius at 5:03 PM on January 31, 2018


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