Impaired Driving Awareness Month: 53 feet to safety

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a sponsor of the National Impaired Driving Awareness Month campaign, along with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) and the Governors’ Highway Safety Association. New Year's Day is the deadliest on the roads: The second-deadliest is Thanksgiving Day. In between, the daily average is 45 impaired driving related deaths. The rest of the year daily average? Twenty eight per day.

In the United States the NHTSA tallied 10,322 people killed in alcohol-related collisions, representing a third of 2012 traffic deaths. One out of every 10 arrests for all crimes in the U.S. were for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) or Operating While Impaired (OWI), accounting for 1 out of every 80 licensed drivers. The death toll is higher than the previous year, despite tougher penalties, safer cars and more enforcement.
Four more facts:

• In 2012, 29.1 million people admitted to driving under the influence of alcohol - that’s more than the population of Texas – according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
• Intoxicated driving involvement in fatal crashes was 4.5 times higher at night than during the day (36 versus 8 percent) – according to the NHTSA.
• Nine of 10 drinking and driving incidents happen after drinking with family, friends or co-workers – common during the holidays. “There is almost always somebody around who could be part of the solution,” says DrinkingAndDriving.org.
• Highway alcohol-related deaths are 100 percent preventable. Passive alcohol detectors can measure a driver's BAC before starting the vehicle and render it unable to start. If the driver is intoxicated, he isn't driving. Critics claim the technology has not been perfected. However, the technology already exists for the non-invasive technique (see related examiner article), although the public appetite for the device does not. The idea was suggested four years ago in the book What the Early Worm Gets as the way to conclusively eliminate all drinking and driving accidents.

“Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable,” National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Deborah Hersman said. “They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will.”

Drunk or buzzed driving is the act of operating or driving a motor vehicle while motor skills are impaired under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In the United States, the point of impairment is pegged at .08 Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC). However, studies have demonstrated that motor-skill impairment begins at much lower BACs. Reaction time is 1/5 of a second for an unimpaired driver. With alcohol in the system, reaction time is slowed to 4/5 of a second at .06 BAC. At 60 mph, a second means 88 feet. A fifth of a second is 17.5 feet, 4/5 of a second is 70.4 feet. The family minivan slamming on the brakes in front of an impaired driver is 53 feet closer, reaction-time wise, compared to an unimpaired driver.

Lab research indicates at 0.02 to 0.05 BAC, the ability to see or locate moving lights correctly is reduced as is reaction time and the ability to judge distance. A 2014 study demonstrated crash risk increases 42 percent after just a single drink. (See Crash risk jumps at 0.01 BAC) Even if not obviously impaired, at 0.05 BAC drivers are twice as likely to have a crash as before they started drinking...At 0.08 BAC drivers are five times more likely to have a crash than before they started drinking. Over .08, the crash likelihood jumps to 10 times that of a sober driver.

Enveloped in the push to legalize marijuana today is the illusion that driving “high” is somehow safer. It's still illegal to drive under the influence of any drug, not just alcohol, even in states where marijuana isn't illegal to possess or consume. Smoking or ingesting weed impairs judgment and motor coordination and slows reaction time, and a stoned person has an increased chance of being involved in and being responsible for an accident. Research from the NHTSA indicates that when drivers are killed in motor vehicle crashes, drugs other than alcohol are involved about 18 percent of the time. That means that one in six drivers killed in traffic mishaps are under the influence of drugs other than alcohol.

Another 2010 study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence found that of all drivers involved in auto crashes, 6.8 percent tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The same survey found that 21 percent of those drivers also were above the legal BAC level.

--See full article

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Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of the Bringing Inspiration To Earth show feature with Scott Stevens. Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature on Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud also can be found on www.alcohologist.com, plus an interview with Scott Stevens on Health Media Now and one at Christoph Fisher Books.  Mr. Fisher is an acclaimed international author from the UK, among his works is the Alzheimer's book "Time to Let Go."  

New research: Crash risk jumps 46 percent with just one beer

Drivers who drink alcohol, but not enough to reach the legal threshold of 0.08 blood alcohol concentration (BAC), are still more likely to cause traffic collisions than those who are sober, according to a University of California San Diego study. The research published in January's Injury Prevention, examined crash data in what is being considered the first nationwide research on actual fatal and non-fatal car crashes caused by minimally buzzed drivers.

UCSD sociologist David Phillips and his team found drivers with a BAC of 0.01 percent are 46 percent more likely than a sober driver to be officially and solely blamed by accident investigators for causing a collision. They found that blame increases steadily and smoothly from 0.01 (a single drink) to 0.24 (three times the legal limit).

"We find no safe combination of drinking and driving—no point at which it is harmless to consume alcohol and get behind the wheel of a car," Phillips said. "Our data support both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) campaign that 'buzzed driving is drunk driving' and the recommendation made by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to reduce the legal limit to BAC 0.05 percent. In fact, our data provide support for yet greater reductions in the legal (BAC)."

Phillips said police and judges -- along with the public at large -- treat 0.08 as "a sharp, definitive, meaningful boundary," and authorities don't impose severe penalties on those below that standard. "The law should reflect what official accident investigators are seeing," Phillips said.

During the entire year, an average of 25 people are killed each day by intoxicated motorists according to data from the NHTSA. One out of every 10 arrests for all crimes in the U.S. were for Operating While Impaired (OWI) – above the 0.08 standard – accounting for one out of every 80 licensed drivers.

Earlier lab studies find reaction time to be 1/5 of a second for an unimpaired driver. A heavy drinker or one with the disease of alcoholism may not "feel" impaired at minimally buzzed BACs, but the lab shows a definite deterioration of reaction time. With alcohol in the system, reaction time is slowed to 4/5 of a second at 0.06 BAC. At 60 mph, a second means 88 feet. A fifth of a second is 17.5 feet, 4/5 of a second is 70.4 feet. The car slamming on the brakes in front of an impaired driver is 53 feet closer, reaction-time wise, compared to an unimpaired driver.

Yet another study indicated at 0.02 to 0.05 BAC, the ability to see or locate moving lights correctly is reduced as is reaction time and the ability to judge distance. Even if not obviously impaired, at 0.05 BAC drivers are twice as likely to have a crash as before they started drinking...At 0.08 BAC drivers are five times more likely to have a crash than before they started drinking. Over 0.08, the crash likelihood jumps to 10 times that of a sober driver. The increase bears out in the new UCSD study of actual crashes as well.

A May 2013 hearing by the NTSB produced ideas for reducing drinking and driving deaths, among the ideas, lowering the limit legal for driving from 0.08 to 0.05 BAC. One hundred other countries have lower BAC limits for driving than the U.S. The idea is being debated around the country because the board has no authority to make the recommendation a law.

The last time the NTSB recommended a blood alcohol limit change, from 0.10 to 0.08, it took two decades and the threat of Congress withholding highway funds for the idea to become law in all 50 states. An Indiana state legislator, Senator Michael Crider, R-Greenfield, predicts that is what it will take again. "If you look at the percentile drops, it's a pretty significant drop in the legal driving limit for drunk driving. It's going to be something not necessarily real popular, based on what I saw last time."

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), an expected ally of the proposed lower limit, is not behind it, instead focusing on its own three-pronged agenda for reducing impaired driving. The NHTSA also opposes the change to 0.05. Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say, "Leave it to the states to decide."
--from examiner.com (see full article)


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Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud, plus the new radio interview replay is available at alcohologist.com... and please read the new interview with Scott Stevens at Christoph Fisher Books.  Mr. Fisher is an acclaimed international historical fiction novelist from the UK

AAA poll: 96 percent against drinking and driving but 20 percent do it anyway

A not-so-surprising disconnect exists between the public attitude toward driving while impaired and the personal responsibility to do something about it.  "No way should THEY drive like that, it's dangerous.  But me?  I'm fine."


“Do as I say, not as I do,” is the prevailing mindset among motorists when it comes to intoxicated driving. The annual American Automobile Association (AAA) survey, The 2013 Traffic Safety Culture Index, was released online Dec. 17. In it, one in five U.S. motorists who drink say they’ve driven at least once in the past year when they thought their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) might have been close to or above the .08 legal limit.

About 19.5 percent said they took the wheel impaired, according to a statement from AAA’s Foundation for Traffic Safety. The percentage is up over the prior two surveys, and contradicts another AAA finding that 96 percent of drivers believe it’s somewhat or completely unacceptable for people to drive when they think they might have had too much to drink.

Intoxicated driving – or drunk driving – killed 10,322 in 2012 according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The NHTSA figures also represent a year-over-year increase. (See related Impaired Driving Awareness Month alcohologist.com post)

The AAA survey also showed that two thirds of respondents are in favor of requiring new cars to have built-in devices that would test drivers to make sure they are sober before the ignition starts. Similar technology is in use today to monitor those with intoxicated driving arrests and people abstaining due to the disease of alcoholism. About 63 percent approve of lowering the legal BAC limit to .05 from .08. Both measures were among 20 recommendations in a May 2013 report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on how to reduce or eliminate drinking and driving deaths.

AAA advises drinkers to stay overnight, designate a sober driver or use public transportation or a taxi rather than get behind the wheel impaired. One out of 10 arrests for all crimes in the U.S. were for Operating While Impaired (OWI), accounting for one out of every 80 licensed drivers. The AAA also revealed its estimate for 2013 year-end holiday travel is 94.5 million travelers, an increase for the fifth consecutive year. The holiday travel season is when alcohol-related travel deaths peak at an average of 48 per day. The average for the entire year is 25 per day.

-- from examiner.com, see full article

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Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud, plus the new radio interview replay is available at alcohologist.com... and please read the new interview with Scott Stevens at Christoph Fisher Books.  Mr. Fisher is an acclaimed international historical fiction novelist from the UK. 

Texan gets probation for murdering four while driving intoxicated: You can't make ice cream out of cow shi

A Tarrant County, Texas, judge was RIGHT in saying a teen who murdered four while driving intoxicated wouldn't get treatment while incarcerated. But the judge was gravely mistaken for punishing the murderer with probation. In Wisconsin, where I grew up, we have a saying: You can't make ice cream out of cow shi... And here's why nobody is making ice cream this week.


First, the case. CBS Dallas-Fort Worth reported a judge sentenced the 16-year-old teenager to 10 years probation for an intoxicated driving crash that killed four people in June. Hollie and Shelby Boyles had left their home to help Breanna Mitchell, whose SUV broke down. Brian Jennings, a youth pastor, was driving past the mother and daughter and pulled over to help. That’s when investigators say the Ethan Couch slammed into everyone. Couch admitted he was drinking and driving. At the time of the crash his blood alcohol was three times the legal limit.

Eric Boyles, a North Texas man who had two family members killed in the crash, walked from the court and tried to speak through the tears. “We had over 180 years of life taken, future life, not 180 years lived, but 180 years of future life taken and two of those were my wife and daughter.”

Defense attorney Scott Brown said, “There is nothing the judge could have done to lessen the suffering for any of those families.” Lawyers had argued that the boy’s parents should share the blame for the crash, because they gave him everything he wanted. The teenager’s attorneys pleaded for a sentence that involved therapy in California, at cost $450,000 a year, rather than years behind bars.

“She [judge Jean Boyd] fashioned a sentence that is going to keep him under the thumb of the justice system for the next 10 years,” Brown said. “And if he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do, if he has one misstep at all then this judge or an adult judge when he’s transferred can then incarcerate him.”

Eric Boyles didn’t agree with the judge’s sentence or the assertion that therapy is what the young perpetrator needed. The victims families were hoping for closure. “Today could have been a good start at that, unfortunately the wounds that it opened only makes the healing process that much greater and more difficult,” Boyles said.

________

During sentencing, Judge Boyd noted that Jennings would not get the treatment he needed while incarcerated. And that is an unfortunate and expensive truth about the corrections system. I've written a book on it, reported on it, and I have been on the inside as an offender. People can and do get better in corrections' drinking programs, but it is rare. It is not treatment on the inside, it is mistreatment.

No broadly conceived treatment program for offenders exists today. The 12-step-oriented programs are kept at arms' length because of their spiritual leaning, even though their success rate is arguably better than all else.

(Some of the observations that follow come from What the Early Worm Gets, my 2010 book on coerced programs.) Sensory deprivation is the ONLY way for an educated person to avoid the rampant anti-sobriety messages in jail. Forty to fifty percent of the time in jail is spent scheming to get drugs or alcohol into jail, planning to deal or drink or get high on the outside on release day, or glorifying how they used drugs and alcohol (and people). It is a swap meet for bad ideas. This lively chit chat takes place between sleeping and watching cartoons or gambling. One face is worn during the program, and another anti-sobriety face is worn through the rest of the time in the facility.

The library was a refuge of sorts. The library did have several good books on sobriety and alcoholism and recovery. The books were not as popular as the Urban fiction or the hip-hop magazines. For example, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers is a classic Alcoholics Anonymous book. It was checked out only eight times between 1995 and October 2009 and only once from April 2005 to October 2009.

 

Sadly, the anti-sobriety messages also were distributed by the program staff at the jail. They permit offenders who had their probation revoked – even dope dealers and those without any documented need for alcohol treatment – priority access to the taxpayer-funded alcohol programs. These are the same people who failed drug and alcohol tests after already having been released early once! Not once is any priority given to people who actually want to take the publicly funded programs. And that is the crux of recovery: A person has to WANT to change. Coerced treatment is a well-documented failure.

Yet, jails/prisons will always have the required headcount in those programs. Sometimes inmates cannot even get past the waiting list. Are we fixing the right people?

And are we fixing them at all? I struggle with this flawed system because we’re told to be sober by people who have no clue what it is like to be Alcoholic, and we’re told to succeed in sobriety among people who have no intention of embracing it.

We succeed in real recovery when we find a reason—a meaning—in sobriety. In jail- and prison-run programs you’re instructed to be happy when what we really need is a reason to be happy. It’s like having your picture taken. You can be told to say, “Cheese.” But the great pictures are when the smile is one you had reason to wear. You wear a smile when you learn to cope with shame and guilt. Prison works on the premise that you will be shamed into compliance.

In an exit interview the program director for the Corrections alcohol program I was in admitted two things. She said, “This is the only exposure most inmates get for alcohol problems,” and in practically the next sentence added, “On average a person has 13 programs before sobriety.” Not recovery, but sobriety. I don’t think these two facts are unrelated. If they go through 13 programs, you pay 13 times. Could the money be better used in prevention and education outside the fences? 

Corrections is in the role of warehousing humans with varying levels of Antisocial Behavior Disorders. Sociopaths. Dr. Marc Schuckit, author of “Alcohol & Sociopathy: Diagnostic Confusion,” in the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, put it this way. “It is necessary to distinguish between the alcoholic who engages in a limited sphere of antisocial behavior and of the antisocial who abuses alcohol as part of his behavior. The process and prognosis of these different varieties are distinct. (Ironically, the issue of Dr. Schuckit’s article I accessed was in a corrections’s own library, stamped, “Bureau of Program Services.” Perhaps they hadn’t yet gotten around to reading the 1973 article, as they make no effort to make such a distinction. Why, because corrections is in the business of warehousing sociopaths. Not in the “treatment” business for a complex medical and biochemical disease like Alcoholism. The judiciary doles out the punishment. The jail’s role isn’t punishment, it is housing those who are being punished.

There's a corrections saying: “You don’t go there for punishment, you go there as punishment.” Corrections is no more equipped to handle real treatment than an auto mechanic is trained as a French pastry chef. They are two different disciplines. And you wouldn’t pay Mr. Mechanic for his cooking. But you are paying billions for ineffective programs run by corrections with your tax dollars with sometimes toxic results.

Couch, the intoxicated driving murderer in Texas, wasn't heading for treatment for an alcohol use disorder.

Now, on to the sentence... no ice cream there either.

_______

As long as the public appetite is in favor of incarcerating intoxicated drivers, should a judge have such wide latitude to dole out an alternative like Couch got: Probation? No. If the public thinks jail sentences are a deterrent for drinking and driving, that is the will of the public. I know several offenders through the course of my work who did not murder a soul or dent a fender and spent time behind bars.

No sentence will bring the dead to life... but someone did kill them. And they call them “crashes” instead of “accidents” because it was no accident. An impaired person decided to drive a one-ton weapon into four people when he turned the key in the ignition... he just hadn't hit them yet.

Do longer sentences act as a deterrent? Not likely. Alcohol-related traffic deaths rose nationwide from 2011 to 2012 according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) figures despite a slew of enhanced laws including stricter sentences. And guess what: As awful a place as it is, the environment just is not a deterrent. Not for people who like living that way. It isn’t much of a deterrent for the six or eight percent of us who have alcoholism either because, if we have no fear of drinking ourselves to death, prison isn’t going to scare us too much, either.

That said, the law was broken, and the public said Couch should be incarcerated for his crime, not sent to Lindsay Lohan's treatment center. At a minimum, the families got a really cold, harsh slap in the face with Couch's slap on the wrist.

The Criminal Justice system is full of painters when it comes to jailing and rehabilitating intoxicated motorists. The real world’s treatment process, where there are consenting, active participants in the recovery process is full of eye doctors. A painter lets you see the world as he sees it. An eye doctor will let you see the world as it really is more clearly.

What we're seeing clearly in Texas is no ice cream, but something being spoonfed to the public and the surviving families that smells a lot like cow shi

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Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud, plus the new radio interview replay is available at alcohologist.com... and please read the new interview with Scott Stevens at Christoph Fisher Books.  Mr. Fisher is an acclaimed international historical fiction novelist from the UK. 

Are U.S. drivers – and lawmakers – ready for a .05 blood alcohol limit or even more severe mandates?

The NTSB adopted 20 recommendations May 14 aimed at getting intoxicated drivers off the road and reducing the number of alcohol-related highway fatalities.  Among the recommendations is a lower threshold for the definition of intoxication.  The NTSB's recommendations carry a lot of weight, especially when Congress gets behind them by linking highway funding with the proposals as they did when the legal limit dropped from .10 to .08 in 2004 and in the 1980s when the drinking age was increased to 21.

Here's the report from examiner.com, followed by a surprising response from Mothers Against Drunk Driving as well as some other observations on driving under the influence.


A hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) May 14 produced ideas for reducing drinking and driving deaths, among the ideas, lowering the alcohol limit legal for driving. “Our goal is to get to zero deaths because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable,” NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. “They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will.”

Forty percent of U.S. highway deaths – or just under 9,900 lost lives – were attributable to driving while intoxicated in 2011, the most current year for which results are available.

The NTSB recommendation is based on results in other countries, 100 of which have limits below the .08 BAC limit in the U.S. In Germany, .05 is the limit, and 17 percent of traffic fatalities are alcohol related. In Australia, also at a .05 limit, 28 percent of motorists killed had a BAC over the limit. Fatal crashes decreased 18 percent in Australian states which lowered BAC limits from 0.08 to 0.05, despite having lower drinking ages and higher incidence of alcohol use disorders, such as the disease of alcoholism, than the U.S. Throughout much of Europe, the BAC limit also is .05 and alcohol-related traffic deaths were halved within 10 years of instituting the lower limit.

The Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices, says expect push back from states on lower legal limits to curb drunk driving. “It was very difficult to get .08 in most states so lowering it again won’t be popular,” Jonathan Adkins, an official with the states' group, says. “The focus in the states is on high content offenders as well as repeat offenders. We expect industry will also be very vocal about keeping the limit at .08.”

Drinking may seem to affect individual drivers in different ways, however, lab research indicates at 0.02 to 0.05 BAC, the ability to see or locate moving lights correctly is reduced as is reaction time and the ability to judge distance. Even if not obviously impaired, at 0.05 BAC drivers are twice as likely to have a crash as before they started drinking...At 0.08 BAC drivers are five times more likely to have a crash than before they started drinking. Over .08, the crash likelihood jumps to 10 times that of a sober driver. (See the article “What 53 feet means” for more on driver impairment.)

The lower BAC limit is among 20 recommendations in the "Reaching Zero: Actions to Eliminate Alcohol-Impaired Driving" report adopted by the NTSB. Also on the table is a system of passive alcohol detectors in all motor vehicles proposed December 19, 2012. (See related examiner.com article). The passive technology could be similar to fingerprint scanning presently used by some U.S. And U.K. companies to monitor employees in high-risk or high-profile positions.

The NTSB is an independent agency which studies traffic safety issues and makes recommendations for law changes or safety improvements, but has no-law making authority of its own.

-- from examiner.com


Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), an expected ally of the proposed lower limit, is not behind it, instead focusing on its own three-pronged agenda for reducing impaired driving.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also opposes the change to .05.  Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say, "Leave it to the states to decide." The beverage industry, naturally, called the proposal "ludicrous."

Where the rubber meets the road here is the question:  How far are we willing to go to save 10,000 lives?  If drinking and driving is the burning safety issue, there would be no push-back given other countries' experience with lower limits as well as ample research that proves "impairment" begins at .02.  That level is where Swedes set their legal limit for driving... and they rarely have an alcohol-related traffic fatality.

Rarely.  But they still have them.

Passive alcohol devices, as proposed in the 20-item NTSB platform, are something I mentioned three years ago in What the Early Worm Gets IF America really is serious about drinking and driving.  That's because...
... intoxicated driving deaths are 100 percent preventable with such a mandate.
NHTSA is behind it.  The Automotive Coalition for Transportation Safety is on board.  The U.S. mandated airbags in the name of saving lives.  The states mandated seatbelt use in the name of saving lives.  If we're interested in eliminating 10,000 entirely preventable deaths in the U.S., a passive detector mandate saves lives.  Lowering the limit still lets an impaired driver turn the key. 
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