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...in 0.08 BAC debateThe Indiana General Assembly's late rally around a tougher definition of "drunken driver" is transparent enough. Shouldn't lawmakers just be honest about their motivation? This is about money, not a matter of conscience, for most legislators. It's too late to hitch a ride on the "morally right thing to do" sound bite bus now. Legislation that would lower the drunken driving threshold from 0.10 percent blood-alcohol content to 0.08 percent has worked its way through both branches of the legislature. At stake -- besides the 30 lives safe highway advocates say a 0.08 BAC law could save -- are millions of dollars in federal highway money. Congress, looking for a national definition of drunken driver, tied demands for 0.08 legislation into a new $17.8 billion transportation bill. If Indiana fails to pass the law by 2004, the state could lose $38 million. With that sort of big-money mandate hanging over their heads, why do Hoosier lawmakers insist on making political hay out of ground they wouldn't consider touching a year ago? This is essentially the same bill that stalled as a nonplayer in Indiana Senate committees nearly every year for the past decade. Suddenly senators -- the same ones who crusaded in the opposite direction, turning their backs on those who testified of horrific stories about losing sons and daughters and mothers and fathers to drunken drivers -- are saying their votes were overpowered by billboards bearing the pictures of drunken driving victims. Please. If it's about money -- and it is -- say so. (Sen. Joe Harrison, R-Attica, didn't have a problem calling the mandate "blackmail.") Don't play the heartstrings of voters if you don't buy the tune. Prevalent among those fessing up to their 0.08 reluctance is the contention that lowering the blood-alcohol content standard won't solve drunken driving. The law, legislative critics say, would clog an already crowded court system and it wouldn't get rid of the most serious, chronic drunken driver -- those arrested at 0.15 BAC and greater. They're right, a 0.08 law won't be a cure-all. But no one said it would be. The 0.08 law isn't so much about plucking impaired drivers off the road and plopping them into the court system. Admittedly, that will be a byproduct that has to be considered. And nothing but a prison sentence or serious rehabilitation is going to keep someone from downing one shot after another before climbing into a car, getting on County Road 350 South, drifting left of center and crashing head-on into someone out for an afternoon drive. But 0.08 would be a deterrent -- one that would keep a restaurant patron who has had four beers with a two-hour dinner from asking for a fifth one. That might be short of the "magic bullet" legislators want before they make any move on drunken driving. But it will keep more impaired drivers off the road, and that's the morally right point, isn't it? |
