Lane Cardwell

If We Could Save Just One Life

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is asking Congress for $30 million annually to develop passive ignition interlock technology that would be standard equipment on all cars. This is a device that would detect and measure the level of alcohol in your body when you grab the steering wheel, and would not allow the car to start above certain BAC thresholds. Contrary to the logic that this would keep drunks off of the road, a good thing, it will keep all social drinkers off of the road. The rallying cry is: If we could save just one life it would be worth it.

For decades the legally allowed blood alcohol (BAC) level was set at .10. Why this level? Because once a person was above .11 the rate of traffic accidents started to climb. Setting the level lower than where the accidents began occurring made sense. Statistically there was no difference in the rate of accidents with BAC levels between .02 and .10. Statistically there was a big difference above .11.

Then something odd happened. The legal BAC driving limit was lowered to .08, with a stated goal of moving it lower over time to .05. I realize that these are just numbers. Let me put .08 into perspective: a 120 pound woman cannot share a bottle of wine during dinner and drive home. The result turned a large number of previously law abiding citizens into drunk drivers. Were they a danger on the road? No, they were merely legally drunk. The new ignition interlocks will be set somewhere .03 and .05 and will not allow the car to start above those levels. Say goodbye to a glass of wine with dinner. But if we could save just one life it would be worth it.

The problem is that this doesn’t take the solution far enough in keeping our highways safe from deadly drivers. It eliminates the non-problem drinker, but does nothing to keep the distracted driver, the tired driver, and the poor driver off of the road. The following are proposals from the Society for Highway Accident Moderation (SHAM) designed to close these other gaps:

·         Remove all car stereos to eliminate the risk of driving while distracted.

·         Jam all cell phone signals within the car to eliminate the risk of driving while distracted.

·         In addition to the ignition interlock testing only for alcohol, it needs to also test reaction speed to eliminate tired or sleepy drivers being behind the wheel.

·         Install a governor on the engine that prohibits speeds above 35 MPH since most fatal accidents occur above this speed.

·         Limit the number of passengers in a car to one to reduce the possibility of distracting the driver. Over time this would be reduced to no passengers.

·         Test drivers each year for license renewal and refuse to reissue licenses for the bottom 20% of the driving public.

I am sure that we would all agree that if we could save just one life that driving without music, a cell phone, and passengers would be a worthy sacrifice. In addition, we wouldn’t want to risk lives by driving sleepy or tired, and would be willing to drive at much slower speeds to improve highway safety.

Research has shown that each of these factors contributes to greater numbers of traffic fatalities than a driver with a .08 BAC level. Let’s not let the government implement an ignition interlock system that gives us the illusion of increased safety. Let’s insist that they endorse all of the above measures so that we are actually safer.

True drunk driving is a terrible thing that risks the lives of those in the car and sharing the road. Turning social drinkers into criminals through misguided legislation should be a crime, but it isn’t. The net result of the introduction of ignition interlock devices into all cars, instead of those of problem drinkers, is the illusion of a safer highway. The real victims will be those restaurants who serve alcohol as part of the experience and who have parking lots. If we can save just one restaurant it would be worth it.

Posted by Lane Cardwell on May 19, 2009 | Comments (2)