Regarding the comments of "cartara," I can see the point of the writer if indeed an accident is considered alcohol related, yet alcohol was not the true cause of the accident. But this is often the way our government works - twisted and with lots of loop holes. I guess I would be pissed if I have a few beers and someone ran into me and was killed, then I was charged with manslaughter. This definitely is unfair and needs to be changed. We need to be fair, but also very hard on those who drink too much and drive, endangering others and themselves. Even if the "legal" limit is below 0.08, some people who drink even a beer or two lose some perspective of their environment. You know well that some people can hold more alcohol and function quite well over others. The problem is the physiology of each of us is somewhat different and responds to drugs, including alcohol, in different ways. So in one sense I see the writer's point. The important thing is to teach our young, who are generally the ones in which very little alcohol will impair their motor skills, that alcohol and driving a machine designed for transportation but is a killing machine as well, do not mix.

I am all for stopping drivers who are truly impaired from driving on our road ways, but I want the truth and not propaganda. What are Alcohol-related traffic deaths?????? Alcohol related traffic deaths DO NOT equal deaths caused by drunk or impaired Drivers! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration defines a fatal traffic crash as being alcohol-related if either a driver or a non-occupant (e.g., pedestrian) has a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.01 grams per deciliter (g/dl) or greater in a police-reported traffic crash. To put 0.01 g/dl in perspective, Eight times that amount is required to achieve a BAC of .08 g/dl, which is now the legal limit of intoxication in most states. Simply put, if a legally sober driver is involved in a traffic accident in which another legally sober person is killed, and the person killed happened to drink one beer 30 minutes prior to the accident, the NHTSA will classify that fatality as alcohol-related and consequently, that particular fatality will be deceptively employed to bolster statistics designed to fortify the perception that mindless, epidemic-type numbers of drunk drivers are blindly hurling down our highways, aimlessly killing innocent bystanders. These same statistics are then implemented into a continual effort to persuade the legislature to enact ever increasingly stringent DUI laws and more severe punishments. If a SOBER DRIVER runs a red light and crashes into a driver who has a BAC of .08 or greater, and the sober driver dies, NHTSA will proclaim that this fatality is alcohol-related, even though alcohol had nothing to do with the CAUSE of the crash, and tragically, the driver with the illegal per se BAC level will potentially face vehicular manslaughter charges or worse MURDER CHARGES! Stop the MADDness / Stop the WITCH hunt! Updated: 2003-08-06 11:52:58
Updated: 2003-08-06 01:58:36