In many states, like NY anything above 0 is illegal. Above 0.08 is criminal.
4 12oz beers is NOT small, be responsible.
Why in America is .08 the legal limit for drunk driving? How come it's not an even 0.10? Who decided at what level being drunk starts? Then 4 beers of 12oz's is 0.08 why is it that small?
Submitted 1 hour ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
aburrito@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
iocase@lemmy.zip 40 minutes ago
The answer for why is MADD and the reason it’s illegal to drive above zero is MADD. They lobby hard for zero tolerance whatsoever. They want the criminal limit to be zero as well. Once they get that they’ll try to ban cars entirely.
BTW I don’t drink so I don’t necessarily care. My criticism is about the goalpost moving of a successful non profit after it gets what it wants. You change the goal to keep your org and funding. They’ll never ever go “mission accomplished, let’s wind this down”…
aburrito@sh.itjust.works 20 minutes ago
This is one of those “idk man I think it depends”. I think the average median person probably should not drive, let alone drink and operate 2 ton vehicles near where people walk. But the law is bs and clearly isn’t nearly effective enough for what the policy it sounds like they advertise for. But on the surface level I’m like 🤷♀️ maybe it should be lower, but everything related to the enforcement of the law is so fucked idek
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 1 hour ago
It’s hard to say there was one specific act that caused it because each state has its own legal limit laws, but
From 2000 to 2004 Mothers Against Drunk Driving protested, rallied, and lobbied to decrease the limit from between 0.1 to 0.15 down to 0.08 and federal congress passed an act to withhold 10% of transportation funding from any state which refused to comply.
The idea behind the movement is this: if you drank any alcohol, you should strongly consider not driving at all. “Buzzed driving is drunk driving”. Generally if people aren’t pressured as such then they will judge for themselves whether they think they’re safe to drive, and drunks are horrible judges.
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
Why does even-ness matter? Just because our number system is decimal doesn’t mean nature fits into that pattern nicely.
at 0.08 you can be measurably tested to have worse reaction capability, so that’s where they set the limit.
4 beers at 12 oz isn’t exactly 0.08, that’s just approximately what it takes in the average person. Some people will be more, some less. Time and other factors affect it too.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 53 minutes ago
It’s because of the children
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 hour ago
Legislators decide things like that…
The limit has to be somewhere. Most experienced drivers can still drive reasonably safely after drinking small amounts of alcohol, e.g. one glass of beer; they can’t after drinking ten glasses of beer. So a limit had to be drawn somewhere. It’s different in different jurisdictions, for example AFAIK there are some countries in Europe (Czechia?) where the limit really is 0.0 or very close to that.
WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
In some cases insurance won’t pay for medical expenses or life insurance premiums if alcohol is involved.
square@lemmy.zip 42 minutes ago
It was .10 pretty much everywhere when I was a kid, .08 became a thing little by little during the 90s, I think. MADD, mothers against drunk driving, is the reason behind this and many of the things surrounding drunk driving some find too restrictive or punitive. They were a very effective lobbying group.
Patnou@lemmy.world 35 minutes ago
Even though their founder is or was a drunk and caught dwi after dwi while heading MADD. Kind of seems the irony speaks for itself and that no one did their background check.