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CONGRESSIONAL UPDATE
BILLS TO MAKE .08 BAC NATIONAL STANDARD FOR DRUNK DRIVING (7/7/00)

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Both the Senate and the House have passed transportation appropriations bills that include language to require states to adopt a .08 blood-alcohol content (BAC) law. The Senate version would sanction states that do not adopt the .08 BAC, while the House version offers $5 million in incentive grants over six years for states that have enacted and actively enforce .08 BAC. Members of a joint House-Senate conference committee will debate whether to make .08 BAC the national standard for drunk driving.

BACKGROUND
In 1998, Congress included the weaker "incentive grant" approach to encourage states to adopt .08 laws in the "Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century;" this is similar to the House provision to be considered by the joint committee. Currently, only 18 states (AL, CA, FL, HI, ID, IL, KS, KY, ME, NH, NM, NC, OR, TX, UT, VT, VA and WA), and the District of Columbia, have enacted legislation lowering the legal BAC to .08. The remaining 32 states still have a .10 BAC, which is the most lenient legal definition of drunk driving in the industrialized world.

The "sanctions" approach adopted by the Senate Appropriations Committee is the same approach that NCADD urged Congress and President Reagan to use in 1984 to press states to adopt a nationwide uniform 21 minimum drinking age law, credited with saving 1,000 lives a year. The Clinton administration has endorsed the "sanctions" approach to establishing the uniform .08 BAC law nationwide.

Legislation to create a national .08 BAC standard is backed by virtually every health, safety, medical, insurance, automotive and law enforcement organization in the nation. The alcoholic beverage industry strongly opposes lowering the BAC to .08.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Contact members of the Joint Transportation Conference Committee (list follows), and urge them to include the Senate provision which would require states to enact a .08 BAC as a condition to receive full funding for federal highway projects in the 2001 Transportation Appropriations bill. If your members are not on the Committee, contact your members and voice your support of the .08 BAC, and ask them to urge their colleagues on the committee to include the sanctions provision.

Tell them:

• According to the US Department of Transportation, 38% (15,794) of U.S. traffic fatalities in 1999 were alcohol-related; on average, drinking and driving killed a human being every 31 minutes;
  
  
• Reducing BAC limits from .10 percent to .08 percent is an effective method of saving lives; if all states lowered their BAC limits to .08, alcohol-related highway deaths would decrease by 500-600 per year;
  
  
• BACs of .10 and above were involved in an estimated 2,570,000 crashes that killed 13,466 and injured 762,000 people in 1996. BACs between .08-.09 were involved in an estimated 40,000 crashes that killed 1,067 and injured 34,000 people that same year;
  
  
• Alcohol-related crashes cost society over $45 billion every year. One alcohol-related fatality is estimated to cost society about $950,000. Each alcohol-related injury averages around $20,000.

Or contact your Senators and Representative online or by calling the Capitol switchboard at 202/224-3121. You can also write them at:

The Honorable -- United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510

OR

The Honorable -- US House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515

If you have any questions, please contact the Public Policy Office via e-mail at publicpolicy@ncadd.org.


Joint Transportation Conference Committee

House Robert Aderholt (R-AL) Sonny Callahan (R-AL) Ed Pastor (D-AZ) Ron Packard (R-CA) Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) Harold Rogers (R-KY) John Olver (D-MA) Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI) Martin Olav Sabo (D-MN) Jose Serrano (D-NY) Ralph Regula (R-OH) Tom Delay (R-TX) Kay Granger (R-TX) Frank Wolf (R-VA)

>Senate Richard Shelby (R-AL) Ted Stevens (R-AK) Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Kit Bond (R-MO) Harry Reid (D-NV) Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) Pete Domenici (R-NM) Arlen Specter (R-PA) Robert Bennett (R-UT) Slade Gorton (R-WA) Patty Murray (D-WA) Robert Byrd (D-WV) Herb Kohl (D-WI)