Back 25 or so years ago, it was 70% of all accidents were caused by drunk drivers. The education and deterrence programs did a good job. Too good a job, because the number and severity of drunk driving accidents dropped drastically.
So, the drunk driving BAC threshold was lowered. Behold, another spike! More stringent and draconian penalties were obviously needed, and so were brought into play.
A couple more years pass by, and arrests once again fall off, so a new set of “weasel words” are used to artificially inflate “drunk driving” statistics.
Enter the phrase : “Alcohol Involved”. When you read this in a newspaper or a NHTSA document, you have been conditioned to automatically associate “AI” with “drunk”. In truth, “Alcohol Involved” only means that there was booze in one or both vehicles! No-one need have consumed any, it just has to be there!
For example: You are driving home from work and your wife asks you to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner. After picking up the bottle, you are t-boned by a little old lady who ran a stop sign. The cops see the booze in your car and you are first off treated like a drunkard, handcuffed and publically humiliated until you can prove sobriety, and secondly the accident is recorded as Alcohol Involved.
Ask me how I know this. All I’ll say is “First hand experience at the gentle hands of our local constabulary”.
Now the BAC limits are being lowered again. If you like tyrannical anti-drinking driving policies, go to Sweden. There, it’s a “zero tolerance” system. Any booze in your system whatsoever, you’re in the crowbar hotel for the night, and will have your licence suspended and some heavy fines to pay.
A world where guilt is automatically assumed and innocence must be proven doesn’t sound like a free world to me. Don’t even get me started on the illegal stop, search and seizure tactics used in every city at their DD check stops.
You explained it well. As the revenue dropped more effort, and laws, had to be made to keep it up. Thanks for the post.