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At first glance, a new national standard for drunken driving might not appear to have much effect on North Carolinians, since the state is among 19 that already have adopted the .08 percent blood alcohol limit signed into federal law Monday.
But the new law should be welcome news for any North Carolina driver who ventures into other states -— such as South Carolina and Tennessee — that have been reluctant to adopt stiffer DWI standards. The new law should reduce the risk that you’ll become the victim of a drunken driver elsewhere, while raising awareness that even moderate amounts of alcohol can significantly impair driving ability.
It took three years to get this bill through Congress, in part because of opposition from American Beverage Institute and National Restaurant Association lobbyists who argued that it was an attack on “social drinkers” and would have little or no impact on alcohol-related crashes and fatalities. Opponents of the .08 national standard even cited a UNC-Chapel Hill study which found little evidence that the .08 blood-alcohol limit had reduced alcohol-related fatalities. North Carolina, however, had already been experiencing a sharp decline in alcohol-related deaths when the .08 limit was imposed in 1993 as part of an ongoing crackdown on drunken drivers.
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study of 11 states with the .08 limit found strong statistical evidence that the lower limit had reduced alcohol-related fatalities in many of those states. But the compelling case for the .08 limit does not lie in statistics alone; physiological tests show conclusive proof that a driver’s performance — attention, response time and coordination — can be significantly affected by that level of blood alcohol.
It’s also worth noting that the UNC study cited by opponents found that people who drink were much more likely to be aware of changes in the drunken-driving law. Compared to teetotalers, they were twice as likely to know about new blood-alcohol limits. Maybe that just makes sense, given that they’re the ones most likely to run afoul of DWI laws. But it also suggests that stiffening the DWI limit gets the attention of people who might consider themselves “social drinkers” and mistakenly believe they can drive safely even after consuming alcohol.
Having a uniform blood-alcohol limit makes sense in the same way that setting 21 as the age for legal consumption of liquor makes sense. Our universal vulnerability to drunken drivers demands uniform deterrents. Whether drinking drivers are in North Carolina, South Carolina or Hawaii isn’t relevant. They’re just as impaired in one state as another — and the victims of their irresponsible decisions will be just as dead.
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