Drunk Drivers Beware.

• Author: Mejeur, Jeanne
• Position: Statistical Data Included

States have more work to do in reducing drunk driving deaths, but there are plenty of good programs to copy.

It's a scene repeated all too often, and it happens in every state. .The torn wreckage of cars, the too-early deaths of the victims, the grieving families and a drunk driver. It happened last December in tiny Brock, Texas. Four teenage girls, inseparable friends and cheerleaders at the local high school, went out to rent Christmas videos on a Saturday night. A pickup truck crossed the center line and hit their car head-on. The girls were killed. The truck driver, who survived, had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of. 16 and is awaiting trial.

Drunk drivers killed more than 16,000 people in 1997. Preliminary figures for 1998 are about the same. Although alcohol-related traffic fatalities decreased 32 percent from 1987 to 1997 - a reduction due largely to stricter laws passed over the last decade - there is more work to be done.

.08 BAC

The area of biggest debate right now is whether states should adopt .08 BAC as the legal limit for intoxication. Studies have long shown that almost all drivers are impaired at .10 BAC in such critical driving skills as judgment, steering ability, vision and attention. Figures from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also demonstrate that alcohol significantly increases the chances of a fatal accident.

The federal government is offering a powerful incentive. The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), passed last year, includes additional federal highway funds for states that adopt .08 BAC limits.

But does it work?

In Texas, the answer is yes. Texas was the only state to pass .08 legislation this year, and it was less in response to the "carrot" of $26 million in extra federal highway funding than it was to save lives.

"We have heard heartbreaking testimony from those who have lost loved ones," said the bill's sponsor, Senator Mario Gallegos. "Today, the voices of Texans have been heard. We can't stop drinking and driving, but hopefully this will be a deterrent."

More than 1,700 Texans died in 1997 in drunk driving accidents. "Because of this legislation, hundreds of Texans will probably live to see another day," said Senator Steve Odgen.

But not all legislators are convinced that .08 is the solution to the drunk driving problem. A .08 bill stalled in the Rhode Island legislature this year because advocates couldn't make a convincing case for changing the current law.

"There is absolutely no evidence that .08 is going to save lives," said Representative Peter Palumbo. "This is a tough thing to do right now, to vote against this, because the media has been all over it saying '.08 saves lives, and if you don't vote for it you want drunk drivers on the road,' which is absolutely wrong. But I don't think, just because of political pressure, we should go ahead and vote for .08 if we don't feel it is the right thing to do."

Members of the House Judiciary Committee, which killed the bill, were swayed by figures presented by the American Beverage Institute that showed 73 percent of Rhode Island's drunk driving fatalities from 1987 to 1997 were caused by drivers with BAC levels of .13 or higher; only 6 percent had a BAC between .07 and .09.

The issue recently became even more controversial. A number of studies from National Highway Transportation Safety Administration support the effectiveness of .08 BAC levels, but have been criticized both for flawed methodology and bias. And a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report issued in June 1999 supports those concerns, documenting that the conclusions of the .08 studies have been overstated and that problems in methodology do exist in the studies. The GAO report notes that reductions in drunk driving fatalities that were attributed to .08 BAC laws were actually the result of .08 being used in combination with other countermeasures, such as administrative license revocation...