Regulation Policy

Dangerous Drivers Of All Stripes

Congress and the president are in the process of forcing the states to lower the blood alcohol limit for identifying "drunk" drivers from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent -- or risk losing their federal highway funds. But how much of a threat does the motorist who has been to a suburban cocktail party and had two or three drinks pose to highway safety, compared to other categories of drivers?

  • Such a person is about three times as likely to cause an accident as a sober driver.

  • But drivers talking on cellular phones have the same accident rate as drivers with a blood alcohol level of 0.10 percent, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study.

  • Diabetic drivers with severe hypoglycemia are 19 times more likely to cause a crash than the average motorist.

  • Elderly drivers and those confronting them are at very high risk, and the accident rate for 18-year-old males is 40 times as high as that of a middle-aged woman.

Finally, motorists who exceed the speed limit by 10 miles per hour impose roughly the same risk as those with a blood alcohol level between 0.08 percent and 0.10 percent, experts report.

Drivers above the intoxication threshold are punished even if they do not cause an accident. Some states have passed laws mandating jail time even for first-time offenders. But motorists in the other high-risk categories are only punished if they commit an actual traffic violation, critics point out.

Source: Jim Holt, "A MADD Law," Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1998.

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