NCJ Number
114822
Date Published
1987
Length
53 pages
Annotation
This review examines three ways in which the legal blood alcohol limit may be determined: setting the limit at the lowest level at which a driver's risk of accident can be shown to be significantly greater than that of a driver with no blood alcohol content (BAC), setting it at a limit that maximizes efficient enforcement, or setting it at a level that maximizes the long-term educative effects of an enforced legal limit.
Abstract
With regard to the first option, there is dispute over the demonstration of statistical significance of relative crash risk of one BAC level over another and over its relevance to the setting of a legal limit and the relation between the limit and its goal of reducing alcohol-related accidents. The option of setting the limit at a level that facilitates apprehension of more of the people involved in accidents requires a shift from a deterrence- to a detection-based philosophy and assumptions about the response of individual drivers to random breath testing that are not supported by evidence from Australian research. The educative perspective suggests that the limit be set at the lowest level acceptable to the community, that it be effectively enforced, and that the aim is to encourage voluntary reduction of alcohol consumption. This view is supported by research that suggests that a heavily enforced legal limit may help overcome peer pressure to drink and drive and that attitudes eventually fall in line with heavily reinforced behaviors. In view of these considerations, it is recommended that the legal BAC limit in Australia be reduced from .08 to .05, that penalties be rescaled to accommodate the lower BAC, and that publicity emphasize the higher risk of detection and the dissociation of drinking and driving. 12 tables and 18 references.