Alcohol: Drawing the Line for Drivers

The number of deaths and disabling injuries due to traffic accidents keeps climbing. In 1958, automotive fatalities totaled 36,981. Last year the toll reached 52,500. Well over half the drivers may have been drinking to the legal point of intoxication before the accidents occurred. To cope with this situation, the National Safety Council in 1961 recommended a stiffening of statutory lim its set to separate sober from drunk drivers. The blood alcohol level* indicating intoxication, advised the N.S.C., should be lowered from .15% to .10%. Some states have adopted the new limit, but is .10% still too high for safety?

Definitely, says Horace E. Campbell, 68, a Denver surgeon and chairman of the Colorado Medical Society’s Auto motive Safety Committee. Campbell, writing in the A.M.A. Journal, cites one study showing that 73% of the driv ers held responsible for fatal or dis abling car crashes had been drinking enough to raise their alcohol level to more than .20% before the accidents occurred. Earlier, the Journal had pub lished a study of 83 drivers killed in single-car crashes in New York’s Westchester County. Of the 83, 49% had had blood alcohol levels of .15% when they died, another 20% registered be tween .05% and .15%.

Setting the Limit. Campbell points out that the A.M.A. has concluded that, “A blood alcohol concentration of .05% will definitely impair the driving ability of some individuals. At a concentration of .10%, all individuals are definitely impaired.” The recommended statutory limit “defies common sense,” writes Campbell, by being set at a level where even a chronic alcoholic’s driving ability is seriously hampered.

How much alcohol in the blood is a practical limit for someone who is driving? Campbell says .05%. In Norway, where drinking is a factor in only 5.7% of serious accidents, that has been the legal limit since 1926. How much can a person drink before his blood alcohol level reaches .05%? Campbell cites an Australian experiment in which ten prominent citizens drank two glasses of white wine, two glasses of red wine, a glass of port, and a brandy or liqueur before, after and during a four-course dinner. In eight out of the ten, the blood alcohol stayed below .05%.

* Alcohol is absorbed rapidly into the bloodstream. Its most pronounced physiological effects are on the brain. When the blood contains .05% ethyl alcohol, the result is depression of the uppermost level of the brain, compulsiveness and a loss of inhibitions: .10% can affect the lower, motor area of the brain, impairing control of the body: .20% may cause an individual to need help walking; .30% can make him fall into a stupor.