Drunken Driving: Are We Angry Enough to Stop It?

How to fight a national disaster.

This is a plea for sanity on our highways.

We have come a long way since motorists were encouraged to “take one for the road.” Today the director general of the World Health Organization states, “Alcohol-related problems have become a matter for world concern. Absenteeism, crime, and most serious of all, drunken driving, are foremost among these problems.”

World statistics show that over 125,000 people are killed each year in automobile accidents due to alcohol. Of that number, 26,000 occur in the United States alone—the highest number, relative to population, in the world. One million more are injured or permanently disabled each year—1 out of every 250 Americans. According to the National Safety Council, there is a fifty-fifty chance that any one citizen (you!) will become involved in an alcohol-related auto accident within your lifetime.

Teenagers are hurt worse. More than 8,000 are killed annually and another 40,000 are injured by traffic accidents due to alcohol. In fact, alcohol consumption is now the leading cause of death among youth between the ages of 15 and 24, and alcohol-related accidents are largely responsible.

What Are We Doing About It?

We are not doing much. And what we do is by fits and starts so that the measures we do take are not effective. Also, those who get caught reckon that action against them is just a tough break, or, worse yet, unfair discrimination.

Since the problem of drunken driving is especially acute among teenagers, many states have raised the legal age for drinking. The alcohol industry and the American Civil Liberties Union have opposed this, arguing that nothing less than our civil rights are at stake. But there is no question that such laws have significantly reduced accidents due to drunken driving. University of Michigan public health specialist and researcher Richard Douglas analyzed six million traffic accidents in seven states. The study turned up “conclusive evidence of a hike in traffic accidents among 18–20 year-olds when the [drinking] age was lowered.”

According to Douglas, every effort was made to trace out other causes, but “evidence of the link was compelling.” He adds, “From a public health perspective, it is irresponsible to pass laws [that set a low legal drinking age].” He is impatient both with the civil-rights plea (a civil right to kill and permanently injure others), and with those who say all the evidence is not yet in. “It is probably the best researched area in traffic study, and the evidence is highly conclusive.”

In 1982, the federal government initiated a second line of attack against drunken driving by increasing highway funding for states that (1) defined legal intoxication while driving at 1 percent blood alcohol content; (2) recognized that level of alcohol content as a punishable offense in itself; (3) required automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for at least 90 days for the first offense and at least one year for repeats; (4) mandated sentences of 48 consecutive hours in jail or 10 days of community service for repeaters; (5) provided for stepped-up enforcement by police officers on patrol.

Unfortunately, only three states qualified for these funds at the time the bill was passed. And even this relatively rigorous legislation is only a move in the right direction. Drinking drivers are a problem almost as much as drunken drivers. A study conducted by the National Republic Service Research Institution shows that one-half of those who were involved in alcohol-related accidents had a blood-level concentration of 02 percent or more. They were legally “sober.”

Alcohol is not really a stimulant; it depresses our inhibitions so that they do not function effectively. In one major study, 55 percent of those interviewed felt they could drive “just fine” after three or four drinks. A considerable number were convinced that they could then drive better (Scripture rightly calls alcohol a “deceiver”).

A major study in Michigan showed that people who drink—even one can of standard beer—and then drive, have a three or four times greater chance of having an accident. That is why some communities have turned to breath tests, with routine stopping of drivers. Again, liquor interests and the American Civil Liberties Union have charged a violation of human rights. They seem constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between true freedom essential to democracy, and pseudo freedoms that destroy the freedom of others. We are free to set up a “road block” to stop cars transporting diseased plants, but not to stop cars that kill 25,000 people and injure hundreds of thousands more each year. The fact is, the vast majority of motorists who are stopped highly approve. They know the lives and limbs that are saved may well be their own, and they are grateful for such protection.

Strict laws, of course, are not enough. They must be enforced. Hence, some states have provided for mandatory sentences; but even that has little effect unless laws are applied consistently over a period of time. As Jordan Mouldern of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says, “It is not just a one-shot crackdown on New Year’s Eve that solves the problem. What the issue needs is applied ethics.”

But stricter laws, mandated sentences, and consistent application have proved remarkably effective in reducing death and injury from accidents. In 1982, Maine cracked down on drunken driving, and the state experienced an astounding 42 percent drop in traffic deaths. When Wisconsin enacted stiffer penalties and mandatory fines for drunken driving, arrests dropped by 18 percent, and the total number of convictions increased more than 11 percent. Some tried to explain the drop in arrests as due to economic recession and the slightly smaller number of troopers on the road, but neither the county law officers or the tavern owners bought that explanation. Observed Col. Howard Goetsch, commander of the Wisconsin State Patrol: “Our field personnel perceive that people are apprehensive about the new law and are either doing their drinking at home or appointing a driver to stay sober and get people home safely.” As one tavern owner puts it, “People who have been convicted once, come back a changed drinker. They know the law is tough and it costs plenty if you get caught.” Most of them agreed that their customers were making major changes in their drinking habits, but that this was quite unrelated to the poor economy and due rather to the tougher drunk-driving laws.

When given an honest try, these approaches work: stricter laws, mandated sentences, and consistent enforcement.

What Shall We Do?

Because we live in a democracy, Christians must remember that they, too, are citizens and therefore part of the government of our land. They are accountable to God for bearing their share of responsibility for its laws.

Accordingly, they must work for state and local laws to secure more rigorous legislation regarding drinking drivers. The following goals are feasible and highly desirable:

1. State laws to conform to federal legislation for extra highway funds—especially a declaration that a 1.0 percent blood alcohol content is illegal and punishable for all drivers.

2. Laws that make it illegal for a bartender to sell alcoholic beverages to anyone already intoxicated.

3. A raising of the minimum age for drinking.

4. Mandatory sentences in some cases.

5. Longer license suspension—for at least one year.

6. Ten days or more of community service for first offenders. (This is often better than a prison sentence since it allows for restitution, and since judges will not even send guilty persons to jail when there is no room.)

7. Better records and funding for the National Drivers Register so that repeaters can be identified before they are tried and can be prevented from merely crossing a state line to secure a new driver’s license.

8. Very high bail.

9. A requirement of counseling for drunken drivers, and the option of counseling for bereaved family members.

But stricter laws, although in themselves desirable, must be enforced to become effective. In the long run, good laws accomplish little unless they are supported by informed and concerned citizens. Therefore, Christians, who are commanded by God to seek the good of all men, ought to serve as good citizens to inform the public of the drastic cost to society that results from lax attitudes towards drinking and driving. They should encourage Americans to look upon driving under the influence of alcohol as criminally negligent and as morally disgraceful. They should seek to establish local task forces to foster alcohol awareness programs, to set up court monitors to determine which judges are exceptionally lenient, to document how county and other local officials handle drinking drivers from arrest to prosecution, and to secure wide newspaper, radio, and television coverage of such offenses.

In all this, a Christian should reject both vindictiveness and joy over the punishment of the guilty. Rather, he should work with compassion for justice, with a loving concern to protect his fellow citizens from this waste of human life and the terrible pain brought to those maimed by drivers who have been drinking.

KENNETH S. KANTZER

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