Seen in Insurance Journal:
The chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Vermont House says he’d like lawmakers to consider lowering the threshold at which a driver is drunk behind the wheel from a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent to a lowest-in-the-nation .05.
Considering the volume of complaints when the threshold was dropped to 0.08% from the traditional mark of 0.10%, I’ve got to believe that there will be some pretty vocal opposition to any such move.
I have to admit that I have a certain bias on the subject, seeing as how the guy who hit my wife in her car accident six years ago had had a couple of drinks, but wasn’t legally over the limit.
Personally I’d like to see a multi-tiered approach taken to DUI laws, something like this:
- Let BAC at/above 0.08% be considered sufficient to deem a driver too impaired to drive safely.
- Let BAC of at least 0.05%, but less than 0.08% be considered evidence, but not proof, of being too impaired to drive safely. A citation for DUI would require other evidence of impairment, such as being at fault in a crash, or erratic driving behavior.
- For drivers of commercial vehicles, drivers under the legal drinking age, or drivers under restriction for prior offenses, adopt a no-tolerance limit of 0.02%, for hopefully obvious reasons.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Dave // 31 Mar 2008 at 11:09 pm
Despite having come from an admittedly biased person, this seems to be an incredibly rational approach to the issue. Good post.
2 PittCaleb // 2 Apr 2008 at 8:54 am
I truly believe people arrested under DUI laws should be prosecuted for Attempted Murder. Drunk driving kills many more than this Iraq war, but those deaths never make the news. Penalties aren’t nearly as harsh as they should be.