The safe amount of alcohol science recommend for an adult is zero.
Alcohol is one of the few substances for which these is proven evidence that any quantity is bad and will cause progressive and irreversible damage to you.
I do drink albeit not much, like a few times a year, so I am not against alcohol at all, it’s your body your choice.
But given the above, I am only happy if the tolerance on driving under any alcohol influence at all is punished
Alcohol is one of the few substances for which these is proven evidence that any quantity is bad
I’ve seen some researches pushing this agenda. They mostly focused on one thing, like cancer, or cut out the “zero consumption” cohort. More comprehensive research shows that while any amount of alcohol increases cancer risks, good done to dexterity of vascular systems overweights it in terms of life expectancy overall at around 7 drinks a week.
In many states, like NY anything above 0 is illegal. Above 0.08 is criminal.
4 12oz beers is NOT small, be responsible.
The answer for why is MADD and the reason it’s illegal to drive above zero is MADD. They lobby hard for zero tolerance whatsoever. They want the criminal limit to be zero as well. Once they get that they’ll try to ban cars entirely.
BTW I don’t drink so I don’t necessarily care. My criticism is about the goalpost moving of a successful non profit after it gets what it wants. You change the goal to keep your org and funding. They’ll never ever go “mission accomplished, let’s wind this down”…
This is one of those “idk man I think it depends”. I think the average median person probably should not drive, let alone drink and operate 2 ton vehicles near where people walk. But the law is bs and clearly isn’t nearly effective enough for what the policy it sounds like they advertise for. But on the surface level I’m like 🤷♀️ maybe it should be lower, but everything related to the enforcement of the law is so fucked idek
My gripe is MADD’s original sole goal was getting a legal limit for drunk driving and an appropriate consequence for it. They succeeded, and each time they succeed they change what their mission is. Here in Canada they’re part of the reason liquor stores close so early or aren’t open on weekends in different provinces.
Again, I don’t drink so whatever, but my complaint is they just don’t stop and go “ok we won let’s shut it down” instead they change the goal and keep pushing harder. I think they might reach a crisis point if they manage to prohibit alcohol again, but I guess then they just start lobbying for harsher laws on other drugs.
Thanks for more of the background esp with Canada. Yeah fuck them
What’s the practical difference between illegal and criminal in the US? To me, a Brit, they are the same thing.
I think it’s misdemeanour and felony probably? Like the difference between petty theft and theft over $5000
It was .10 pretty much everywhere when I was a kid, .08 became a thing little by little during the 90s, I think. MADD, mothers against drunk driving, is the reason behind this and many of the things surrounding drunk driving some find too restrictive or punitive. They were a very effective lobbying group.
Even though their founder is or was a drunk and caught dwi after dwi while heading MADD. Kind of seems the irony speaks for itself and that no one did their background check.
Why does even-ness matter? Just because our number system is decimal doesn’t mean nature fits into that pattern nicely.
at 0.08 you can be measurably tested to have worse reaction capability, so that’s where they set the limit.
4 beers at 12 oz isn’t exactly 0.08, that’s just approximately what it takes in the average person. Some people will be more, some less. Time and other factors affect it too.
The US also doesn’t label alcohol content effectively - % alone is not helpful.
In Australia for example, all booze containers tell you how many “standard drinks” they contain. 1 standard drink is the average amount of alcohol a body can process in an hour. If you have no more than 1-2 standard drinks in you, you should still pass a breathalyzer, depending on weight/gender.
A ~5% beer can is ~1.5 standard drinks. So if you drank 4x beers over the last 3 hours, best spend another hour drinking water before you drive:
4 beers x 1.5 = 6 standard drinks. - 3 hours = 3 standard drinks
Even what is called “1 standard drink” isn’t standardised across countries though.
For you, and also us in NZ it’s 10g of ethanol (approximately 12ml), in the UK it’s 8g. The US does in fact have a standard measure too, but 14g (and I don’t know enough to know how widely it’s actually used).
So as well as the standard drinks per bottle, the rule-of-thumb has to differ between countries too.
It’s hard to say there was one specific act that caused it because each state has its own legal limit laws, but
From before 2000 to 2004 Mothers Against Drunk Driving protested, rallied, and lobbied to decrease the limit from between 0.1 to 0.15 down to 0.08 and federal congress passed an act to withhold 10% of transportation funding from any state which refused to comply.
The idea behind the movement is this: if you drank any alcohol, you should strongly consider not driving at all. “Buzzed driving is drunk driving”. Generally if people aren’t pressured as such then they will judge for themselves whether they think they’re safe to drive, and drunks are horrible judges.
Some countries take it further and anything above a tiny amount (like 0.02) will get you a criminal record… although usually at such small amounts it’s just a fine and/or points on your licence, using bans and prison sentences for higher levels (like the US levels you describe).
This to me is the right approach - it’s long been proven that even regular drinkers suffer an impact on reaction times and anticipation with even a small amount of alcohol, so it really should be zero tolerance. I can’t think of any other situation where you’d be allowed to control a two ton piece of metal at 60+ mph around other people, houses, cars etc without having proper control.
Legislators decide things like that…
The limit has to be somewhere. Most experienced drivers can still drive reasonably safely after drinking small amounts of alcohol, e.g. one glass of beer; they can’t after drinking ten glasses of beer. So a limit had to be drawn somewhere. It’s different in different jurisdictions, for example AFAIK there are some countries in Europe (Czechia?) where the limit really is 0.0 or very close to that.
In some cases insurance won’t pay for medical expenses or life insurance premiums if alcohol is involved.
It’s because of the children
