Mad about MADD: is a BAC level of .08 justified?

By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 1998-09-09

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A link to a rebuttal article is provided below.

If you think it's OK to take a drink or two, or maybe three or four, and still drive, you've got lots of company-and that includes Eric Peters, a nationally syndicated U.S. automotive journalist. Peters argues his case with "facts" which will astound anyone who's been involved in alcohol education, and they fly in the face of everything researchers have been able to determine up to now about the effects of alcohol on driving ability.

In the September 28, 1998 issue of The National Review magazine, Peters takes Mothers Against Drunk Driving to task about being overzealous in fighting drinking and driving. More specifically, he's up in arms about MADD's political push to install a 0.08 BAC legal limit in every U.S. state.

By international standards the .08 BAC limit is not particularly low. Most industrialized countries now have .08 or lower. Most of Europe and all states in Australia have .05. Sweden has adopted .02.

However, Peters argues that any reduction of BAC limits below 0.10 is not relevant to death and injury rates. A .08 limit, he says will increase arrests without any payoff in death and injury reductions. The extra arrests, he adds, will merely serve to entrench MADD as another "well-intentioned lobbying group becoming a self-perpetuating Washington Institution."

The bulk of the drinking driving problem, Peters writes, is hard core drinkers. He points to a Harvard Injury Control Center survey indicating that "67% of those drivers who were killed in automobile accidents after drinking had BAC levels of .15 or higher." Moreover, he argues, "accident statistics show that impairment of driving ability seldom takes place until BAC levels exceed .10 ... A BAC of .08 or less means that there is little enough alcohol in his or her system that it is extremely unlikely to appreciably affect coordination, reaction times, vision, or judgment in a normal person."

"The evidence confirms this at every turn", writes Peters. He cites statistics from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). For example:

In 1996, more than 62 per cent of all traffic fatalities considered to be 'alcohol-related' were the work of drivers with BAC levels above .14-almost twice the .08 level.

Fewer deaths occur in accidents involving drivers with BACs between .08 and .09 than involving those with BACs between .01 and .03, which is cough-syrup territory. Peters complains that "this level [.08] makes it illegal for a 120-pound woman to drive after consuming just two glasses of wine over the course of two hours."

However, NHTSA representatives argue that two glasses of wine (for a 120-pound woman) would be 6 oz of wine with 13% alcohol. This is equivalent to almost three cans of regular beer with 5% alcohol. But, no matter how many drinks it takes to reach .08 BAC, everyone is impaired with regard to critical driving tasks at this level-even experienced drinkers. These include braking, steering, lane changing, judgment, and divided attention.

MADD argues that drunk drivers are responsible for 40 to 50 per cent of all highway fatalities, says Peters. But he accuses them of operating in collusion with the NHTSA, "which misleadingly defines as 'alcohol-related' all traffic fatalities where any trace level of alcohol-no matter how small-is discovered in the bloodstream of any person involved in the accident, even if it's not the driver."

Read a Drivers.com editorial rebuttal to Peters's article, and more on his views of impairment.

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