Drunk Driving in the USA

It didn't take a genius to work out that if a person could barely stand upright, or steer a car in a straight line, they were unlikely to be safe at the controls of a vehicle. But unfortunately there is a very common misconception among those drivers who like to drink alcohol before driving that they will be okay as long as they don't feel tipsy, or drunk.

In the USA, the American Medical Association (AMA) show this belief to be completely inappropriate. They say: “Scientific investigations have produced 50 years of accumulated evidence showing a direct relationship between increasing blood alcohol concentration in drivers and increasing risk of a motor vehicle crash. There is scientific consensus that alcohol causes deterioration of driving skills beginning at 0.05% BAC or even lower, and progressively serious impairment at higher BACs… The American Medical Association supports a policy recommending (1) public education urging drivers not to drink [and] (2) adoption by all states of 0.05% BAC as per se evidence of alcohol-impaired driving…”

There is some rather pugnacious campaigning taking place in the USA in which certain groups are claiming that the legal limits in various states are too low and should be raised to 0.14%. At present, some states have a limit of 0.08% and others have the second highest worldwide limit currently known to the safe driver website -- 0.10%. (If you want to view our regularly revised list of blood-alcohol limits, worldwide, click here). It is not hard to work out that these campaigners want a BAC limit in the USA that is at least 180% percent higher than three-quarters of the 72 other countries we currently know about -- those which have a limit of 0.05% or lower. And that is what this page is primarily intended to examine.

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Whether people, as individuals, like it or not, drinking alcohol and driving is not about whether or not it is likely that you can get home without getting caught. It is about the likelihood of you hurting or killing someone while you are doing it. It really doesn't matter whether a driver has 'got away with it' ten times, a hundred times or a thousand times; that only leads to complacency. Each time someone drinks and drives the risk of them killing somebody is much, much higher -- even before the legal BAC limit is reached. Remember that the American Medical Association (and many other groups of experts, around the world) recommend that drivers should be urged not to drink -- period. Those who are in favor of raising the BAC limit claim that this recommendation is (to use their oft-repeated phrase) symptomatic of "neo-prohibitionism" but that is fallacious. There is no link whatsoever between the argument that one should not drink and then drive and the suggestion that nobody should drink alcohol at all.

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Relevant Topics

Index to ALL of our drunk-driving articles

Links

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)

National Commission Against Drunk Driving (NCADD)

Freeway Watch (including photo's)