A new title twist on the old Sammy Hagar classic rock song & video, “I Can’t Drive 55” …except the latest idea may just make the roads alot safer for everyone instead. The auto safety and driving news world is focused this week on new proposed legislation from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) suggesting that hundreds of lives could be saved each year if the legal blood alcohol content limit (BAC) were lowered from the current 0.08 to the proposed 0.05. Since one-third of all traffic fatalities today are alcohol related the NTSB submits that your risk of being in a car crash will be cut in half if the recommended lower level of 0.05 BAC is enforced. Here are some stories with differing viewpoints on the new proposal.
In Support of Lowering the Blood-Alcohol Limit to 0.05 – CarandDriver
When Roger Sterling takes a glass of vodka “for the road” on the television drama Mad Men, we laugh it off as another bit of black comedy. We’re smirking on our couches, nervously, from the reckless, carte blanche behavior seen on the show’s fictional 1960s setting. But five decades on, despite hundreds of laws on the books, drunk driving is still a very real problem. This week, the National Transportation Safety Board—the federal agency that investigates deadly air and road crashes—proposed lowering the legal blood-alcohol-content threshold from 0.08 percent to 0.05. And while many governors, restaurants, and even the acclaimed Mothers Against Drunk Driving are against it, we’re inclined—as professionals who drive cars for a living—to support tougher drunk-driving laws.
Most European countries, Australia, and even South Africa rely on a 0.05 limit. In Sweden, which has a 0.02-percent limit… [Read More]
To Combat Drunk Driving, NTSB Wants Tougher Blood-Alcohol Limits – TheCarConnection
Seeking to toughen the allowable alcohol limit for drivers, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is calling on states to lower the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) to 0.05 or lower from the current 0.08. The intent behind the proposed new standard is to cut down on the nearly 10,000 annual deaths related to alcohol-impaired driving…
Should we idiot-proof cars for an America that sucks at driving? – Jalopnik
Yesterday NTSB presented a brilliant and innovative idea to reduce alcohol-related traffic fatalities – states should raise their measure of drunk (Blood Alcohol Content) from .08 to .05. The government reaches in the closet for a solution only to pull out…a bigger stick.
Read More…
