National & World News - Lubbock Online.comLink between crashes, alcohol limits unclear

Published: Thursday, March 12, 1998










Link between crashes, alcohol limits unclear

Associated Press

It sounds like a no-brainer: Lower the legal blood-alcohol limit, keep more drunken drivers off American highways, save lives.

That's the theory in the 15 states that lowered their thresholds from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent; in Washington state, where the governor is expected to sign the Legislature's newly passed 0.08 limit; and in 14 other states where lawmakers are pushing for the lower limit.

And last week, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to withhold federal highway money from states that don't follow suit. The House will take up the matter when the Senate finishes work on the $173 billion highway bill.

But does the lower limit actually lessen highway carnage?

In some of the states with 0.08 laws, the raw number of deaths in drunken driving accidents, unadjusted for population change, fell with the new standard. In some, the number rose. In some, it's gone up and down since the law changed.

However obvious the benefits of the lower alcohol limit might seem, it's a tricky business to measure the effect on traffic fatalities.

For starters, reducing the amount of alcohol a driver may legally drink is just one preventive measure in operation. More cars are now equipped with airbags, more drivers buckle their seat belts, more roads are designed more safely and more states are stripping bad drivers of their licenses.

Additionally, many states record their data differently, even from year to year, making comparisons almost impossible. A drop in fatalities attributed to drunken driving could be affected by the number of troopers patrolling highways or the refusal of some crash survivors to take breath or blood-alcohol tests. A jump in the number of deaths could reflect the greater numbers of drivers in a stategmt.

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