Poll to FREEP, NTSB Board for states to lower blood alcohol limit from .08 to .05

State Journal Register ^ | May 15, 2013 | Steelers6

[Steelers6]

One recent recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board was to reduce states’ drunken-driving threshold from .08 to .05 blood alcohol content. What do you think?

That’s way too strict. 42%

Sounds good to me. 35%

The standard should be zero. 21%

[Still Thinking]

Whatever. I’m just pulling numbers out of my ass. My point is that the number per se is meaningless and deserves to be treated as such, and replaced with a fair, functional system that actually measures impairment. So since it makes sense, and the alternative makes none, I guess hoping for government to change it is probably a lost cause.

[Jay Redhawk]

Yes, what needs to happen is the states rely on science instead of the desires of lobbyists. The feds need to stay the heck out the debate. I don’t know what the limit ought to be, but science should be able to give law enforcement a good idea. MADD started out as a positive anti-drunk driving organization, but seems to be moving toward a progressive temperance and prohibition type of outfit.

[Still Thinking]

Yeah, even the main founder has disavowed their current beliefs and tactics. One of the current crop of SAFE (Sluts Against Freedom with Ethanol) was advocating roadblocks because they had been "successful" in lowering the legal BAL to the point at which no impairment might be evident!!! Can't reevaluate her premise in the face of conflicting evidence, oh no! Just trowel on another layer of civil rights violations and all will be well. [facepalm]

[dynachrome]

Revenue enhancement and contol over you is what this is bout.

FREEP THIS POLL ***PING!*** FRmail me if you want to be added or removed from the Fearless Poll-Freeping Freepers Ping list. (multiple votes using multiple internetz devices are allowed!) And be sure to ping me to any polls that need Freepin', if I miss them. (looks like a medium volume list) (gordongekko909, founder of the pinglist, stays on the list until his ghost signs up for the list)

[Bon of Babble]

Yes, it has to do with raising revenues.

Heard on the news tonight that in Florida, yellow lights were shortened to raise revenues. Of course, the state says it “ain’t so.” LOL

[AFPhys]

Local radio station is running a clip of a policeman saying,

“Our department supports this because it will allow us to make more arrests.”

At least he is honest. This has nothing to do with safety.

[libertarian27]

http://bloodalcoholcalculator.org/

This will destroy Restaurants and Bars that are not in cities where public transit and cabs are the norm.

There are many countries with .05, the spin is that the US needs to catch up to the rest of the world....
Agenda-21 Style

[libertarian27]

from the calculator link above

Drinking 4 light beers in 2 hours with my weight would come to a BAC % = 0.054

Which would be:
No going out to dinner
No watching a game at a sports bar
No getting together with friends for a couple of hours
(guess we’ll just have to ‘facebook’ :( )

Drinking 2 light beers in 1 hr calculates to 0.027%
That will cut everyone’s night short and the tills of businesses short.

[TalonDJ]

I know what they do. My brother use to design them. And I know they are nothing like a ‘black box’ because I do avionics for a living. I have designed everything from autopilots to networked tracking systems for things like flight tests. I know what these things do now (not much) and what they could do (stuff that scares the crap out of me).

[DannyTN]

Ok, but the point is that the government’s ability to require devices in our cars to do the things y’all are worried about is separate from the decision to automate driving.

Fighting automated driving because of fears of government abuse is like fighting the printing press because of fears some day the government will print a tax form. Hmmm okay, maybe that’s an equal trade off. But it’s like being against boats because someday the government will require fishing licenses.

[TalonDJ]

The government already requires licenses for fishing, and you have to register any boat larger than your average canoe.

Ok, but the point is that the government’s ability to require devices in our cars to do the things y’all are worried about is separate from the decision to automate driving.

I wish this were so. If it were I would not be against this stuff. But car would already need various overrides and safety systems. The highway department would need to remote control your car. Why? Because reading signs is not reliable. What if the 'bridge out' sign was covered by a branch? No they couldn't risk that. Google is already doing worldwide live traffic updates. Obviously that would be built into the car and it would smartly route around traffic.... and also road construction including roads that were broken. A good hacker would be able to hack and drive you in circles (simply by telling your car there were detours all around)... IF the system was open source or similar. So you would need it to be secure and centrally managed. Naturally the highway department would be happy to run that for us. The police would insist on a remote control shutoff... and they would need a remote 'pull over' command in order to route firetrucks and ambulances. So they would have to have to ability to stop any car at any time. They can't rely on the 'driver' to switch to manual and pull over because many drivers might not actually have licenses.... isn't that the point of automatic drive? And as long as the highway department is tracking traffic congestion there is no way we will get them to do that anonymously. No, they would want to know where each car was. You can't let someone hack the highway system, so each car would have to report its location along with ID and hash tag stuff that lets them be sure someone is not spoofing the signal. That makes it a no brainier to track each car on the road. To build a automation system that does NOT include all this big brother stuff is actually much harder. Plus the final system would be less reliable. Personally I would not trust one to drive me. I know to much about failure modes and 'high reliability' systems. Autopilots have been around since 1912 (yeah that is not a typo nineteen TWELVE) but we don't let passengers fly in a play without a real pilot. There is just to much that can go wrong. CAN we do it? Technologically? Sure. We can also make cars that fly. There are complex reasons why we don't.

[DannyTN]

Wow. So is it all technological progress you’re paranoid about or just automated driving?

[DannyTN]

Wow. So is it all technological progress you’re paranoid about or just automated driving?

[Dundee]

We’ve had a .05 BAC in Australia for a couple of decades and restaurants/bars/pubs/clubs aren’t hurting because of it (they are hurting due to the high minimum wage here though).