Schaeffer Center Senior Fellow Steven Teutsch chaired the Committee on Accelerating Progress to Reduce Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine which released their consensus study report, “Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities” this week.
“People die each day due to alcohol-impaired driving,” the report states. “Although substantial progress has been made in the past to lower the number of these deaths, efforts to do so should be reinvigorated.”
The committee report suggests lowering the blood alcohol level for drunken driving to 0.05, instead of the current level of 0.08. The amount of alcohol required to reach this level depends on the size of the person. The committee also suggested increasing alcohol taxes and availability as well as sobriety checkpoints and public awareness campaigns. Key report findings are available here.
Interviewed on NBC Nightly News, Teutsch said, “It’s difficult for people to detect what their level of impairment is and to realize that they are driving while impaired.”