Reuters – At a meeting in Washington, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) called on state authorities to reduce the legal limit by nearly 40 percent to 0.05 percent. All 50 U.S. states now have a blood alcohol content (BAC) limit of 0.08 percent for drivers aged 21 and over, and younger drivers are held to stricter standards.
I strongly believe this is one of the stupidest decisions the NTSB could make. No one ever knows what BAC limit they are at, especially not the difference between 0.05 and 0.08. All this law change would do is cause more drivers to get DUI’s and DWI’s because they are now driving at what used to be an acceptable level. This is no solution to our country’s DUI problem pertaining to arrests and deaths. This would probably just make it worse. The answer is to introduce a zero tolerance law, just like they have in most European countries (where alcohol-related accidents and arrests are astronomically lower than in the United States), making it illegal to drink anything and drive. That leaves no gray area like what we have now. Zero tolerance would provide all drivers with a clear guideline to follow; if you drink don’t drive, not some of this bullshit “oh I can have two drinks,” you know why that doesn’t work? Because not everyone’s body absorbs alcohol the same way. It is correlated directly with height and weight. So while one person might be able to drink three drinks and legally drive, another person might not be able to even have one. That’s why our current law is so stupid, and why the change to 0.05 would be even further idiotic. Zero tolerance is the easiest answer; either you drink or you drive, there’s no middling between the two.
A zero tolerance law is only the first answer to alcohol-related accidents and arrests, the second is lowering the drinking age. 95% of the world’s drinking age is under 21, but for some reason in the United States we feel the need to deprive the future of our country the right to drink when they can die fighting for our freedom. Another law that makes no sense. Europe, and even our neighbors up north in Canada, have lowering drinking ages and guess what? They have a substantially lower percentage of their population involved in drinking and driving. Doesn’t it make sense that having the highest drinking age in the world has not helped our country at all? We still have the highest number of DUI accidents, arrests, and deaths than ANY other nation on this planet. I don’t know what kind of crack the people over at Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) are smoking, but it’s got their heads completely messed up.
Lower the drinking age and institute a zero tolerance law for drinking and driving. That’s when we’ll see results. None of those 0.05 bullshit.