One drink DUI? Feds want lower threshold for drunk driving

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  Feb. 7, 2013: National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Deborah Hersman speaks during a news conference in Washington. Federal accident investigators were weighing a recommendation Tuesday that states reduce their threshold for drunken driving from the current .08 blood alcohol content to .05, a standard that has been shown to substantially reduce highway deaths in other countries. (AP)

WASHINGTON –  A federal agency is proposing that states lower the threshold for drunken driving to the point where a woman could be charged for driving after one drink and a man after two in a move officials say would save thousands of lives.

The National Transportation Safety Board recommended that all states drop the blood-alcohol level at which motorists can be charged with driving drunk to .05, down from the current rate of .08 that all 50 states impose. The threshold is a matter of state law, but the federal government can pressure states to meet its standard by threatening to withhold highway funding.

"Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable."

- Deborah Hersman, chair of NTSB

"Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable," NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. "Alcohol-impaired deaths are not accidents, they are crimes. They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will."

More than 100 countries have adopted the .05 alcohol content standard or lower, according to an NTSB report. In Europe, drunken driving deaths were cut by more than half a decade after the stricter standard was implemented.

Studies show a woman weighing less than 120 pounds can reach .05 after just one drink, while a man weighing up to 160 pounds reaches .05 after two drinks.

New approaches are needed to combat drunken driving, which claims the lives of more than a third of the 30,000 people killed each year on U.S highways — a level of carnage that that has remained stubbornly consistent for the past decade and a half, the board said.

"Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable," NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. "Alcohol-impaired deaths are not accidents, they are crimes. They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will."

But the recommendation to lowering the alcohol content threshold to .05 is likely to meet strong resistance from states, said Jonathan Adkins, an official with the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices.

"It was very difficult to get .08 in most states so lowering it again won't be popular," Adkins said. "The focus in the states is on high (blood alcohol content) offenders as well as repeat offenders. We expect industry will also be very vocal about keeping the limit at .08."

The lower alcohol content threshold was one of nearly 20 recommendations aimed at reducing drunken driving made by the board, including that states adopt measures to ensure more widespread use of use of alcohol ignition interlock devices. Those require a driver to breathe into a tube, much like the breathalyzers police ask suspected drunken drivers to use.

The board has previously recommended states require all convicted drunken drivers install the interlock devices in their vehicles as a condition to resume driving. Currently, 17 states and two California counties require all convicted drivers use the devices.

However, only about a quarter of drivers ordered to use the devices actually end up doing so, NTSB said. Drivers use a variety of ways to evade using the devices, including claiming they won't drive at all or don't own a vehicle and therefore don't need the devices, staff said.

The board recommended the National Highway Safety Administration, which makes safety grants to states, develop a program to encourage states to ensure all convicted drivers actually use the devices. The board also recommended that all suspected drunken drivers whose licenses are confiscated by police be required to install interlocks as a condition of getting their licenses reinstated even though they haven't yet been convicted of a crime.

Courts usually require drivers to pay for the devices, which cost about $50 to $100 to buy plus a $50 a month fee to operate, staff said.

The board has previously called on the safety administration and the auto industry to step up their research into technology for use in all vehicles that can detect whether a driver has elevated blood alcohol without the driver breathing into a tube or taking any other action. Drivers with elevated levels would be unable to start their cars.

But the technology is still years away.

Studies show more than 4 million people a year in the U.S. drive while intoxicated, but about half of the intoxicated drivers stopped by police escape detection, the NTSB report said. The board made several recommendations aimed at increasing both the visibility and effectiveness of police enforcement, including expanded use of passive alcohol devices. The devices are often contained in real flash lights or shaped to look like a cellphone that officers wear on their shirt pockets or belts. If an officer points the flashlight at a driver or the cellphone-like device comes in close proximity to an intoxicated driver, the devices will alert police who may not have any other reason to suspected drunken driving.

The use of the devices currently is very limited, the report said.

Dramatic progress was made in the 1980s through the mid-1990s after the minimum drinking age was raised to 21 and the legally-allowable maximum level of drivers' blood alcohol content was lowered to .08, the report said. Today, drunken driving claims about 10,000 lives a year, down from over 18,000 in 1982. At that time, alcohol-related fatalities accounted for about 40 percent of highway deaths.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Drowsy driving remains an elusive highway dilemma

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  In this March 12, 2011 file photo, emergency personnel investigate the scene of a bus crash on Interstate 95 in the Bronx borough of New York.AP

It probably happens to most drivers.

Heading home after an overtime shift and the eyelids flutter. Up all night with a sick baby and you rest your eyes for just a moment on the way to dropping off the kids at school. Drowsy drivers often make it safely to their destination, but for some, the consequences are devastating.

"To this day I still hear my boys crying out, yelling for Daddy, when they were told the news," says Jackie Califano, the widow of a New York police officer killed when a suspected drowsy driver plowed into his parked cruiser in 2011. "The pain we experienced is beyond description and continues to be."

More than 11,000 deaths were attributed to drowsy driving from 2000 to 2010, according to federal statistics. And experts say it's a problem that can't easily be solved by new laws because proving sleepiness behind the wheel is difficult, if not impossible.

Authorities can easily determine how much alcohol is in a driver's blood, or whether someone has used illegal drugs, or even if someone has been texting while driving.

But quantifying drowsy driving is not an exact science, prosecutors say, and laws banning commercial truck and motor coach operators from driving more than 14 hours a day and requiring 10 hours between shifts are flawed because they often rely on the drivers to report those hours themselves.

In a drowsy driving case late last year, a tour bus driver was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide in a 2011 Bronx crash that killed 15 people. A jury rejected prosecutors' arguments that Ophadell Williams was so sleep-deprived from working another job that it affected his reflexes as much as if he was intoxicated.

That verdict influenced a Long Island prosecutor's decision this year to drop negligent homicide charges against the truck driver involved in a fatal crash that killed Califano's husband. Ultimately, the truck driver pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor reckless driving charge and paid a $500 fine.

"If you are going to try and make fatigue -- sleepiness -- a criminal legal issue in a motor vehicle accident, you have a lot, lot more to prove," said Patrick Bruno, who defended Williams in the bus crash case.

Maureen McCormick, who heads the Nassau County vehicular crimes bureau, explained that to obtain a conviction in the police officer's death, she would have had to prove "serious blameworthiness," "moral blameworthiness" or "dangerous speeding," a standard she said is impossible to meet.

"Drowsy driving is something that generally has happened to everyone," McCormick said. "The question is what do we do as a society when that feeling starts to come?"

When McCormick read a statement at the truck driver's sentencing on behalf of Officer Michael Califano's widow, veteran police officers and journalists wiped away tears.

"Michael, Christopher and Andrew now have to grow up without him," McCormick said as Jackie Califano sat in the front row of the courtroom, hugging her sons, 16, 13 and 8. "No more doing homework with his help. No more sports with him. No more family vacations. No more horsing around with dad. No dad for Father/Son Night at school. No dad at home to turn to when they need advice."

New Jersey is the only state that has successfully passed legislation addressing drowsy driving, according to Dan Brown, an Atlanta attorney and member of the National Sleep Foundation board of directors. But he noted that "Maggie's Law" doesn't fully solve the problem because prosecutors must show that a driver had been awake for 24 consecutive hours to prove possible recklessness, which is often a difficult proposition.

New Jersey court officials didn't have statistics available on the number of arrests or successful prosecutions since the law was enacted in 2003.

Massachusetts state Sen. Richard Moore said he considered legislation after a constituent's son was killed in a 2002 drowsy driving crash. But, Moore said, "It's not as easy as drunken driving; there's not a good deal of research." Instead, Massachusetts is including early warning tips in driving manuals, and there is an effort to add rumble strips that warn drivers when they are drifting off the road when state highways are resurfaced, he said.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says while sleep is the best cure, drinking two cups of coffee, followed by a 15-to-20-minute nap, can refresh some drivers for a short period of time. Things like turning up the radio volume, singing loudly, chewing gum or eating, and getting out of the car and running around are not effective.

"There's not a way to legislate against sleepiness," said Bruce Hamilton, manager of research and communications at the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which instead focuses on public education campaigns and issuing brochures advising on the dangers.

Last summer, drivers in Tennessee's four largest cities saw message boards imploring them to not drive while drowsy, along with a running tally of highway fatalities in that state.

Mark Rosekind, a National Transportation Safety Board member who formerly directed a sleep research center at Stanford University, says it's a pervasive problem that requires a culture change to fix.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study this year that found 4 percent of U.S. adults nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month.

"For some reason people in our culture think it's OK to lose sleep and get behind the wheel," Rosekind said. "It's just as bad as drinking and driving. As far as public awareness, drowsy driving is in the dark ages compared to that, but it's just as dangerous.

"The issue has been around for a while and we need to get the word out. Clearly it has not penetrated our culture."

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