Drinking and Driving: Stricter Laws Needed to Prevent Drunk Driving

According to CDC.gov, “Every day, 28 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver.” With this resulting in a death every fifty-one minutes, driving under the influence is harming more people than we know. Because drinking and driving is becoming a national epidemic that is affecting the lives of people who don’t or can’t drive, stricter laws must be passed to prevent it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 209 of the 1,132 traffic deaths among children ages 0-14 involved an alcohol-impaired driver. On an ethical level, this doesn’t seem right, since these kids are not even able to drive yet. Federal law says a person cannot lawfully drive until he or she is fifteen years old and possesses a driver’s permit. These young adults have little to no say in how the people who give them rides to places and the other people around them drive, yet they are the ones paying the price for other people’s negligence. What some people don’t understand is that there is never an excuse good enough to justify drinking and driving. The possibility of lives being lost and/or ruined is too great. People can save lives and even preserve the quality of their own with just a simple phone call asking a close friend or family member for a ride home or to wherever they need to go. Imagine having to tell a parent that their young child has been killed by a drunk driver. Better yet, imagine being told that your child has been killed by a driver under the influence. It wasn’t their fault, they had no say in how the people involved drove, yet they are the ones paying the ultimate price. There is no good way to explain death to someone who is grieving a loved one’s death, but when it wasn’t their fault and completely out of the victim’s control, the situation becomes even worse. When tragic incidents like this occur, the consequences for the intoxicated driver vary so greatly that depending on what state it occurred in will determine if your license is suspended for a week versus six months.

DMV.org reports that all states except Utah have set a .08% blood alcohol concentration (BAC) as the legal limit for driving under the influence (DUI). For commercial drivers in all 50 states, it is said to be .04%. Every state in the United States also has zero tolerance policies in place and enforces them for any driver under 21. All states, excluding Utah, define driving at or above this level as a crime. However, penalties for committing this crime vary from state to state. For example, Texas has a mandatory 90-day suspension of someone’s driver’s license and enforces laws against open alcoholic containers in your vehicle, while Virginia will only suspend your license for 7 days and doesn’t have laws about open containers. This creates an issue for drunk drivers that cross state lines, and for prosecution purposes. There are also laws set by the federal government that mandate some type of ignition interlock law. According to GHSA.org, this interlock that is latched on and activated in the offender’s car will disable the engine if any alcohol is detected on their breath. Again, states have different laws that pertain to these devices and who is required to have them. Some states require all offenders, including those who have only committed this crime once, to have the device while others only require repeat offenders to install them in their vehicles. The fact that repeat offenders are still driving with their license and fully legal is reason for concern in of itself.

As a nation, we should strive to make drinking and driving a federal matter. To better regulate offenses, we should make laws against this issue the same across all 50 states. That being said, drinking and driving should be made a federal offense, and therefore a more serious crime. Imagine this, a Texan goes to an Oklahoma bar, gets drunk, and attempts to drive home. To do that, he must drive across a state border. Just a few miles after crossing the Texas-Oklahoma border, a state marshal suspects him of driving under the influence and pulls him over. After a quick breathalyzer test, the marshal sees that the man’s blood alcohol concentration is at a .1% and is therefore driving illegally. Instead of having his license suspended for a mandatory 180 days, Oklahoma’s state law, his license is only required to be suspended for 90 days because that is all that Texas requires. These cases occur and are argued about every day. It would simpler and easier to just change the laws to be the same then let more and more of these arguments come up. Creating these stricter laws against drinking while under the influence will also work to decrease the likelihood of the crime being committed to begin with, as it already has. Studies show that in states that have stricter laws against the matter, the number of incidents involving drunk drivers are significantly lower than in states where you just get a slap on the wrist for it. Just this fact should be enough of a reason to make the laws stricter across the United States.

In conclusion, stricter laws must be passed to prevent drinking and driving since it is affecting the lives of people who can’t even drive yet. Ethically this is not right and we, as a nation, must change the status quo to further prevent this. When it’s to the point of being classified as a national epidemic, it’s an important enough issue to receive immediate attention. In the words of an unknown source, “The problem with drinking and driving is…the mourning after!”