19 Apr 2005
Alcohol-impaired driving on the increase

Are these folks just stupid? One of the authors states:

"This is not just a statistical bump or noise in the data," he added. "This is a true behavioral change."

In 1997 a major push was initiated to lower the legal blood alcohol limit from .10 g/l to .008 g/l. Some states went even further, to .005 g/l.

Americans got obese when the standards for obesity were lowered, now Americans are getting drunker since the standards for drunkeness were lowered. Does anybody else see a pattern here?

A national survey has found that after a long, slow downward trend, alcohol-impaired driving has recently increased significantly. From 1993 to 1997 the estimated annual number of episodes of alcohol-impaired driving (AID) declined at a rate of a little more than one percent per year, from 123 million to 116 million. From 1997 to 1999, however, it increased 37 percent, from 116 million to 159 million. It stayed at that increased rate in 2002.

(link) [Science Blog]

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