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Balko: Abolish DWI laws to focus on impaired driving

Reacting to Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo's call for a new DWI-lite charge in Texas' statutes, Reason magazine's Radley Balko makes the case for eliminating DWI laws based on blood alcohol content and focusing on impaired driving of all types. The crux of his argument:The right solution, however, is not to push the artificial line back farther. Instead we should get rid of it entirely by repealing drunk driving laws.Consider the 2000 federal law that pressured states to lower their BAC standards to 0.08 from 0.10. At the time, the average BAC in alcohol-related fatal accidents was 0.17, and two-thirds of such accidents involved drivers with BACs of 0.14 or higher. In fact, drivers with BACs between 0.01 and 0.03 were involved in more fatal accidents than drivers with BACs between 0...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on October 12, 2010 (boomark / email).