Blood Alcohol Limit For Drivers Should Be Lowered To 0.05 Percent: NTSB

[ieoeja]

11. Back in the mid to late 80s, when the limits were between .12 and .15 ...

... I interviewed with an insurance lobby organization.

HIM: What do you suppose we spend most of our money on.
ME: Drunk driving.

HIM: Yes. And why do you suppose we do that?
ME: To cut down on payments you have to make for accidents caused by drunk drivers.

HIM: Wrong. According to our statisticians alcohol is definitely responsible for about 5% of traffic fatalities. The real numbers are probably double or triple that number.
ME: But everyone keeps saying it is 50%?

HIM: If we ignore all other factors like weather and time of day, then we can get that 50% number.
ME: So why are you are trying to stop drinking and driving?

HIM: Two reasons. First, a few years ago consumer groups would fight against us when we tried forcing higher rates on drinkers. Today, we have them convinced that higher rates are part of their justly deserved punishment.
ME: What about insurance companies that drop drunk drivers?

HIM: When a company drops a drunk driver, they always recommend some high-option insurance company to their former customer. Of course, both insurance companies are owned by the same people!
ME: Ah.

HIM: Then there is the second reason. Every time we get a state to lower the BAC level, a whole new batch of drivers who were ineligible for that high option insurance 24 hours earlier are suddenly driving illegal! So the companies get to double down on this.



Then a few years ago I saw a notice of a holiday crackdown in which the police stated that no taxpayer money would be wasted as holiday pay was being donated by such-and-such group. So I looked into that group and, bingo, their funding was almost exclusively provided by insurance companies. Making our police on those holiday weekends effectively working as hired mercenaries.


I also have a theory that the MADDness played a part in the death of populism in rural regions. Traditionally, there have been two major areas where people got together to discuss the issues of the day: churches and bars. In rural regions where there are no taxis and no public transportation, bars were really hard hit. The town near the farm where I grew up now has slightly less than half the number of bars it had in the 1970s. While the number of churches has doubled with all the new churches being fundie.

So churches have become far more the center of society than before Reagan and MADD. While liberals like my parents reached a point where they rarely interacted with anyone outside the home after dark. Because when the sun went down the police start to roam the streets.