[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 38 (Monday, March 30, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2760-S2763]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ALCOHOL-IMPAIRED DRIVERS ON OUR ROADS

  Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I rise today to discuss a major threat 
to the life and health of countless Americans. I am referring to the 
alcohol-impaired drivers on our roads.
  Madam President, as part of the Senate's action on the highway bill, 
we passed an extremely valuable measure that would save many of these 
precious lives. Through the amendment offered by myself and my 
colleague from New Jersey, who is on the floor now, we said that if a 
person's blood contains .08 percent alcohol or higher, that person is 
not fit to drive.
  This Lautenberg-DeWine amendment, passed this body by a very wide 
margin. I rise this afternoon because there is a rising tide of 
disinformation being spread about this .08 legislation. This 
misinformation campaign is funded in large part by the alcoholic 
beverage industry.
  I strongly believe that as we move this measure forward through the 
legislative process, we all must be guided by the facts. The facts are 
simple: All widely accepted studies indicate that the blood alcohol 
standard should be set at .08 BAC. ``BAC,'' of course, stands for 
``blood alcohol content.'' At .08 BAC, individuals simply should not be 
driving a car.
  The risk of being in a crash rises gradually with each increase in 
the blood alcohol content level of an individual. But when a driver 
reaches or exceeds the .08 blood alcohol content level, the risk rises 
very rapidly.
  At .08 a driver's vision, balance, reaction time, hearing, judgment, 
and self-control are seriously impaired. Moreover, at .08, critical 
driving tasks--concentrated attention, speed control, braking, 
steering, gear changing and lane tracking--are also all negatively 
affected.
  The alcohol industry, in arguing against the .08 standard, claims 
that ``only'' 7 percent of fatal crashes involve drivers with blood 
alcohol content levels between .08 and .09. Well, let us look at what 
that really means. If we take their own statistics, if we use the 1995 
figures, that means that approximately 1,200 Americans died because of 
alcohol, drivers impaired at the levels of .08 and .09--1,200 lives 
were lost.
  Madam President, that obviously is too many. Changing the blood 
alcohol

[[Page S2761]]

standard to .08 could have saved these lives.
  Let me talk now about the tragic consequences of .08 alcohol driving 
for some real Americans.
  State trooper Steven Blue of Toledo, OH, arrested a young woman who 
was driving at a blood alcohol level of .15. She was convicted and 
spent the mandatory 3 days under Ohio law in jail. Madam President, 8 
months later the same officer arrested the same person again. This time 
she was driving with a blood alcohol content level of .085. The officer 
wanted to charge her with impaired driving, driving under the 
influence, but her defense attorney argued that because the per se 
standard in Ohio is .10, the charge should be knocked down to reckless 
operation.
  Now, of course, Madam President, in Ohio, as in most States, if you 
are below .10 but still seriously impaired, you can be charged with 
driving under the influence. In fact, the Ohio law reads, as most 
States do, ``appreciably impaired.'' So even if you test at .10, 
technically you can be charged with this offense, but as a practical 
matter, the standard is .10, pure and simple.
  In this case, regrettably, the prosecutor felt compelled to reduce 
the charges. If these charges had not been reduced, if they had gone 
ahead with the original charge of driving under the influence, the 
young woman would have spent 10 days in jail, and maybe, just maybe, 
that would have turned her life around and at least warned her off from 
further alcohol-impaired driving.
  But that did not happen. She then moved to San Diego, and 2 years 
later Trooper Blue got a call from a law firm asking him for his 
testimony about his earlier arrests of the same young woman. You see, 
she had taken up drunk driving again. Driving the wrong way down a one-
way street, she killed two people.
  Madam President, the State trooper, Steven Blue, has to deal with the 
real-life consequences of .08 alcohol driving. So did I when I was a 
local county prosecutor in Greene County, OH, dealing with mangled 
bodies and devastated relatives of people who died much too soon.
  But you don't have to be a State trooper or county prosecutor to 
understand a simple fact: .08 drivers kill people. No amount of 
propaganda can obscure that fact. That is why in this morning's 
Washington Post an editorial calls our .08 measure ``a most reasonable 
and effective measure to curb deadly drunk driving.'' The Washington 
Post is not alone in praising this bill. The Austin American-Statesmen 
from Austin, TX, the Baltimore Sun, Omaha World Herald, Toledo Blade, 
New York Newsday, and many, many other papers have all endorsed this 
legislation.
  Madam President, this measure will save lives. That is why I will 
continue to fight for its enactment all the way through this 
legislative process.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent we continue in 
morning business, as has just been requested by the Senator from Ohio.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. I want to say a couple of words about the dialog that 
Senator DeWine and I have had, working together, about the reduction of 
the blood alcohol content to .08. I listened very carefully to the 
information he just gave regarding repetitive assaults on excessive 
alcohol in this one case even, at the fairly reduced level of .085. It 
kind of forecast a tale that would have an unfortunate outcome.
  I think it is important, as we consider legislation on ISTEA that 
carries this prohibition of driving over .08 blood alcohol content, we 
ought to review the case and see what it is we are discussing because 
I, too, in the State of New Jersey and around the country, have been 
subjected to criticism from the restaurant associations, the Alcoholic 
Beverage Association, and others who say, ``What do you want to do, 
take away social drinking and friendliness?''
  We have only one mission, and I share this with the distinguished 
Senator from Ohio on this particular issue. That is to protect the 
lives of between 500 to 700 people a year, it is predicted, and also to 
send out notice that drinking and driving is an unacceptable condition 
in America. Mr. President, .08 certainly is a level which, I think it 
is fair to say, has conclusively been established as the beginning of 
significant impairment behind the wheel, including slowness in 
adjusting to different speeds, braking, turning.
  It happens enough. We lose 17,000 people a year, Mr. President, to 
traffic accidents that involve alcohol. Over 40,000 to 41,000 people 
are killed each and every year. I use a reference fairly frequently 
that, in the worst year of Vietnam--when this country was, if not in 
virtual mourning, certainly in virtual internal turmoil about what was 
happening there--in its worst year, we lost about 17,000-plus people in 
Vietnam, and every year we lose 17,000-plus people on our highways and 
it doesn't get the same kind of public reaction as it did when we were 
engaged in combat in a cause that our people served but one that had us 
challenging the policy decision that got us there in the first place. 
There can't be any challenge here. It is such an easy thing.
  I was the author of the uniform drinking age bill that raised the age 
to 21 across the country. We had had modest alcohol requirements in 
legislation offering incentives for States to get this thing done--
reduce, make sure you had your road checks, and make sure you were 
cautioning people about driving while under the influence of alcohol, 
driving while intoxicated. It never quite did the trick.
  But we found out when we raised the drinking age to 21, and we said 
those States that don't do it will be subjected to penalties by virtue 
of a loss of the highway or infrastructure funding that they may get, 
we had a devil of a time. It took a long time to persuade some places, 
like Washington, DC, which was making the callous calculation about 
whether or not revenues derived from tavern receipts, restaurant 
receipts, would be more than that which they would lose if they failed 
to raise the drinking age to 21. They finally agreed, and we had the 
unanimous support of all 50 States and the District of Columbia.
  I am pleased to report that it is estimated that over 15,000 lives 
are saved as a result of a minimum drinking age of 21. Imagine, 15,000 
families that don't have to mourn, 15,000 families that don't even want 
to contemplate what it might be like to have an empty place at the 
table.
  We both have heard from the Frazier family in Maryland that lost a 9-
year-old daughter. Her name was Ashley Frazier. When you see her 
parents and her sister talk about the emptiness that surrounds that 
household, about the place at the table where the mother sits 
occasionally because they want to be reminded that Ashley was a 
significant part of their everyday lives--they set the table for four, 
and only three of them are there for dinner. I have watched Mrs. 
Frazier compelled to tell her story through tears because she doesn't 
want another family to have to go through that experience. Her daughter 
was killed at 8 o'clock in the morning by a woman who was just over 
.08, who drove up on the sidewalk as Ashley and her mother were waiting 
for the schoolbus to pick her up. She describes in the most horrifying 
language how she felt when she heard the impact and realized what 
happened to her daughter.
  So, Mr. President, this is a pursuit that we are going to continue to 
engage in, the Senator from Ohio and I and many others who supported us 
when we had the vote on the issue here, because it is the right thing 
to do.
  The one thing that I can't believe is that the Licensed Beverage 
Association wants to stand up and challenge whether or not .08 is 
really an impairment. Mind you, it takes, according to the National 
Highway Traffic Safety Education, over four beers, four drinks, four 
highballs--over four--4\1/2\, to be precise--for a 170-pound person on 
an empty stomach to reach the .08 level. Now, that sounds like fairly 
heavy drinking. A woman of roughly 135 pounds would have to take 3\1/2\ 
drinks for her to get to .08 in 1 hour on an empty stomach.

[[Page S2762]]

  That is pretty significant drinking. And so we say to the Restaurant 
Association, Why? ``Well, it could ruin our business and throw all of 
these people out of work.'' Well, Mr. President, I can tell you this--
we heard the same appeal or the same challenge in 1984 when the 
drinking age was raised to 21, and the Restaurant and the Licensed 
Beverage Association said, ``You are going to ruin business in this 
country.''
  I don't know whether anybody has noticed an absence of restaurants or 
hospitality spots in our society since 1984, but I can tell you that I 
haven't. I don't think anyone else has. Just read the list of the 
better restaurants and of the new beverages that come out, the new 
concoctions, mixed drinks. They are not going to lose any business with 
this either. And if they do, so what? If they save somebody's child 
from dying because someone was too drunk to drive, then that is a price 
that ought to be paid. I, frankly, think that if they are serious about 
this and they remind their bartenders and servers and people are 
reminded through campaigns that when you get to .08, you can't go 
behind that wheel--not without risking serious punishment, perhaps loss 
of a license and something even worse if it is repeated.
  And so, Mr. President, so many times we go through the legislative 
process here and we forget, at times, the impact that it has on a 
family or on an individual. It becomes too much a calculation of other 
things than the right thing. We ought to do this. I am hoping that as 
ISTEA moves along, we will not only have .08 in there but we will have 
it with the measures that we have introduced and said, at the end of 3 
years, if you haven't reduced your blood alcohol level acceptance to 
.08, you lose 5 percent, and if it goes for another year, you lose 10 
percent. But at the end of 6 years, you still state A, B, or C, and you 
still have the opportunity to reclaim those funds that you would have 
lost, because we are giving it that much latitude. The program begins 3 
years out and goes until 6 years without permanent loss of funding.
  So I commend the Senator from Ohio for his interest and his attention 
to the details. As a prosecutor, we heard him say, he saw too much of 
the mayhem that is produced from someone getting behind the wheel who 
is unfit to drive. I look forward to working with him on this issue and 
other issues in which we share a common interest.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DeWINE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. DeWINE. I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business 
for the next 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I congratulate my colleague from New 
Jersey for an excellent statement and for his long-time dedication to 
this very important issue. The point he makes he makes very well. We 
are dealing with real people here. Sometimes when we come to the Senate 
floor, we don't know the consequences of our actions. But this is a 
case when we came here and the Senate passed, by a very, very 
substantial margin, this amendment and put it into the ISTEA bill. We 
knew what the consequences were. As I said at the time, before the 
vote, this is one of the few times when you can come to the Senate 
floor and know that if you cast a yes vote as a Member of the U.S. 
Senate, that yes vote is going to save lives. You will never know whose 
life will be saved, but you can be assured that hundreds and hundreds 
of people will live because of that law that is getting ready to be 
passed that you were voting on. The majority of the Members of the 
Senate, by a big margin, did in fact agree with that.

  I would like to, as I did a moment ago, focus on individuals and on 
real stories. I did that a moment ago when I talked about the woman who 
had been convicted of DUI in the State of Ohio and tested at a high 
level. The same highway patrol officer arrested her again a few months 
later. This time, she tested ``only'' .08. Under Ohio law, the 
prosecutor did not feel they could go forward with the DUI, so she was 
ultimately charged with reckless operation. Then, of course, the tragic 
end to that story, as I related a moment ago, is that it wasn't too 
long after that when she showed up in San Diego, and this time deaths 
occurred as a result of her drinking and driving, and the family had to 
suffer that horrible, horrible tragedy.
  Let me tell another story, and this is true. This happened a couple 
of weeks ago. Just a couple of weeks ago in Ohio, on March 1, in 
Montgomery County, OH, a Dodge Ram pickup truck collided with the rear 
of a stopped Honda Prelude. The Dodge Ram rode up right on top of the 
Honda and turned over on its side. The Honda was pushed forward into 
traffic, where it hit a sheriff's cruiser that was stopped in traffic. 
The sheriff's cruiser was pushed forward, and it hit a Chevrolet C10 
van.
  How can one car hit another car--a stopped car--so fast that it rides 
up on top of it and tips over? The answer is simple: The driver of the 
Dodge Ram was impaired, in this case, with a blood alcohol level of 
.76.
  Mr. President, the risk of being in a crash rises gradually with each 
increase in the blood alcohol level. When a driver reaches or exceeds a 
.08 blood alcohol level, the risks rise very, very rapidly. They take 
off at about that point. At .08 a driver's vision, his or her balance, 
reaction time, hearing, judgment, self-control, are all seriously 
impaired; critical driving tasks, like concentrated attention, speed 
control, braking, steering, gear changing, and lane tracking, are also 
negatively affected.
  That is why the driver of this Dodge Ram piled on top of a stopped 
car and caused a four-car pileup that led to the summoning of emergency 
medics. Just another example, another unnecessary casualty, of a blood 
alcohol limit that is simply too high.
  Let me relate to the Members of the Senate several other true 
stories. We talked in the last several days to another highway 
patrolman in Ohio, Barry Call of Gallipolis, OH. He has been a highway 
patrolman for 6 years and has seen about a dozen cases where the driver 
was clearly impaired but could not be charged because they tested 
``only'' between .07 and .09 on the breathalyzer.
  Trooper Barry Call, in one case, saw a car pulling left of center a 
couple of times and pulled over the driver. The driver was clearly 
impaired, and she should not have been behind the wheel of a car. Her 
breathalyzer test showed a blood alcohol level of .084.
  Another example: Trooper Richard Donley of Wilmington, OH, has seen 
fatalities in cases where drunk driving was a factor and the blood 
alcohol level was .06, .07, or .08. Sadly, says Trooper Donley, the 
courts, as a matter of practice, generally will throw out any DUI 
charge under .10, because the reality is that when you set your level, 
whether it be .08 or 10, or, as it was many years ago, .15, while the 
law says that if you hit that level and you test that, under most State 
laws it is a per se violation in and of itself. That level, at the same 
time, also really sets the standard. So anything below that, even if 
the officer observes very erratic driving, even if the person fails the 
sobriety test--what they call ``field test'' out on the road--the 
reality is that those cases are very difficult to win if the driver 
does not test over that limit. And so that limit really becomes the 
standard of the State.

  As my colleague from New Jersey pointed out so very well, when we say 
.08, what we have to understand is that an average male, a male of 165 
pounds, would have to consume over four beers in an hour on an empty 
stomach. I think most of us know from our own experience that if we 
have four beers in an hour on an empty stomach, we absolutely have no 
business being behind the wheel of an automobile. We know that--
absolutely.
  Another way of looking at it is to ask a question: If you were at a 
party--maybe some people were at your house--and you observed a friend 
of yours have four beers in an hour on an empty stomach, and didn't eat 
anything, would you put your 5-year-old daughter in the car and let him 
take her out to get an ice cream cone or something? We all know what 
the answer to that would be. It would be a very foolish and reckless 
person that would do that. No one would do that. No one in their right 
mind would do that.
  So we know from our own experience that that person who tested .08 
simply should not be behind the wheel of a car. What the Senate did, 
and what I hope

[[Page S2763]]

the Congress will do, is set this very minimum national standard so 
that wherever you drive--if you live in Cincinnati, for example, you 
might be in Kentucky one minute and in Indiana the next minute. We all 
move around from State to State. If you live in this area, you might be 
in Washington, DC, and then Virginia, and then Maryland. We move 
around. There will be some minimum standard so a driver and passengers 
can be assured that it will be illegal for a driver who is coming at 
them or who is on the other side of the road to test over .08, no 
matter where they are, on what road, anyplace in these great 50 States.
  Let me give some more personal testimonies or examples. We have 
talked to Ken Betz, whom I have known for a number of years in many 
capacities. He is now the director of the Coroner's Office in 
Montgomery County, OH. Of the 36 alcohol-related driving fatalities his 
office has seen in just the past year, seven of these involved drivers 
who had a blood alcohol content of .08 or less. I will repeat that. In 
Montgomery County, OH, there were 36 alcohol-related driving fatalities 
in the last year. Of those 36, seven of them involved drivers who had a 
blood alcohol content of .08 or less.
  One driver lost control of his car late at night and was killed. His 
blood alcohol level was .06. Another driver was killed when he ran into 
the back end of a stopped construction truck. His blood alcohol level 
was under .06. Another person was driving a motorcycle and turned left 
into an oncoming Ford Mustang. He wasn't wearing a helmet. He was 
killed. His blood alcohol content was .07. Another driver went off the 
right side of the road, down into a culvert. He and a passenger were 
both killed. His blood alcohol level was .07.
  These are actual cases from Montgomery OH, in the last year.

  Another driver lost control and struck several steel poles before 
plowing into a stopped car. He was killed. His blood alcohol level was 
.08.
  Mr. President, people who drive at a .08 blood alcohol level are 
clearly impaired. There is absolutely no doubt about it. The risk of 
being in a crash rises gradually with each increase in the blood 
alcohol level, beginning at .01. But when a driver reaches or exceeds 
the .08 blood alcohol level, the risk rises very, very rapidly. At .08, 
a driver's vision, balance, reaction time, hearing, judgment, and self-
control are all seriously impaired.
  It is interesting, Mr. President, as this debate continues, and as we 
read some of the information that is put out by the alcohol industry. 
They can't really seriously cite or argue that anyone who tests .08 is 
not appreciably impaired in their reaction time, in their 
concentration, in their judgment. No one can say that. We all know that 
for a fact. Moreover, at .08, critical driving tasks like concentrated 
attention, speed control, braking, steering, gear changing, and lane 
tracking are all affected.

  The Senate overwhelmingly passed our legislation. I hope the whole 
Congress will pass it. It would help America crack down on these 
impaired drivers and make our roads safer for our children and for our 
families. That is why I will continue to fight for this lifesaving 
measure throughout the legislative process.

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