Ed Haas

The loose use of the term alcohol related represents the greatest fraud perpetrated on the people of South Carolina in the last 25 years.

August 10, 2004 -- Just when I thought my respect for the state newspaper in Columbia couldnt plummet any lower, I read the shameful DUI law frustrates police article by Henry Eichel of Knight Ridder, and found a new level of distain for this atrocity commonly referred to as The State. There is so much error to be found in this article, which happened to appear in the Sunday, August 8th 2004 edition of the state tabloid, that I struggle to decide which legal fiction to refute first.

The subtitle read, "They say loopholes in new S.C. statute render it ineffective, as alcohol-related road deaths soar."

What the reporter cleverly failed to explain to the reader is the definition of alcohol-related. When the average person reads, "As alcohol-related deaths soar," there is a natural assumption that of these deaths that are souring there would in fact be found a relationship between alcohol and the deaths. Yet because of the purposeful push of broken hearted mothers, prohibitionists, and the opportunistic parasite better known as the insurance industry, the definition of alcohol-related has become so liberal that most anybody involved in a traffic fatality could become entwined in this ever-widening, statistical dragnet.

Highway-safety activists thrive on the inappropriate usage of the term alcohol-related, as well as on the statistics that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provides for them. These same activists then masquerade alcohol-related as drunk driving to purposely deceive the public into believing that there is a major drunk driving epidemic in America. What they do not tell the public about are the statistics that would frame their hysteria in a logical perspective.

So what is the definition of alcohol-related?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration defines a fatal traffic crash as being alcohol-related if either the driver or a non-occupant (e.g., pedestrian) has a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.01 grams per deciliter (g/dl) or greater in a police-reported traffic crash.

A BAC of 0.01 is one-eighth the legal limit in South Carolina. And notice how the word accident has been replaced with the word crash. That was not by accident - pun intended. The fanatics knew that if they were ever going to make a BAC of 0.08 the legal limit in all 50 states they would need to convince the lawmakers that there was a real crisis mounting on the public roadways. Interestingly, these are the same activists who 15 years ago told lawmakers that a BAC of 0.10 would solve the drunk driving problem, yet in 2003 approximately 1.5 million people where arrested for DUI.

So what does it all mean? Using the NHTSA definition, the following scenarios demonstrate situations that would be categorized as alcohol-related traffic fatalities by the government.

Car A with a driver and passenger runs a red light and hit Car B. Both occupants of Car A have no alcohol detected. The driver of Car B is killed. It is later determined that the killed driver had a BAC of 0.11 beyond the legal limit.

This is an alcohol-related traffic fatality although alcohol had nothing to do with the fatality.

Car A with a driver and 3 passengers crosses the centerline on a rural South Carolina road and hits Car B, which has 4 occupants. All 7 people are killed. Test results indicate that a passenger in Car B had a BAC of 0.02 one-quarter the legal limit.

These seven deaths are each considered as alcohol-related even though alcohol had nothing to do with the fatalities.

An intoxicated pedestrian stumbles onto the roadway and a sober driver hits the pedestrian and kills them.

This is an alcohol-related traffic fatality even though the driver was sober and not at fault.

A legally sober driver with a BAC of 0.05 hits a bicyclist as she attempts to pass the bicyclist on a narrow road. As she is overtaking the bicyclist, the bicyclist unexpectedly shifts toward the center of the road. It is at that moment that the vehicle driver was accelerating to pass, and hits the bicyclist with the right front section of her car. The bicyclist is killed.

This is an alcohol-related traffic fatality although alcohol had nothing to do with the fatality.

A driver beyond the legal limit with a BAC of 0.09 loses control of their vehicle as they attempt to negotiate a poorly maintained, poorly engineered South Carolina road. The driver leaves the roadway, strikes a tree, and is killed.

This is an alcohol-related traffic fatality although alcohol had nothing to do with the fatality. The state assumes no responsibility.

A driver beyond the legal limit with a BAC of 0.17 loses control of their vehicle and strikes a telephone pole. They die immediately.

This is an alcohol-related traffic fatality. 65% of all alcohol-related traffic fatalities are single vehicle accidents. Unfortunately these deaths are used to bolster the perception that all alcohol-related traffic fatalities are innocent victims.

The key point here is the fact that the cause of accident is never considered when discussing alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Additionally, South Carolina relies on the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) to obtain South Carolina statistics. What nobody bothers to tell lawmakers or the public is the fact that FARS imputes or predicts alcohol involvement in approximately 50 percent of the so-called alcohol-related traffic fatalities.

To demonstrate:

A white male, age 25, driving a pick-up truck on a rural South Carolina road at 3:30AM on a Friday night, for reasons unknown to the police, apparently drives off the road and strikes a tree. He is pronounced dead at the scene. Police investigate and determine that the driver was not exceeding the speed limit. They do note two crushed beer cans in the cap of the truck, but blood tests later indicate that the driver had a BAC of 0.00.

THIS FATALITY WILL IN ALL LIKLIHOOD BE CONSIDERED AS ALCOHOL-RELATED.

Those people who are actually lobbying for the eventual zero alcohol, zero tolerance DUI law will consequently use this fatality along with all the other alcohol-related fatalities to bully the weak politician into the political corner and then force their hand into voting in favor of the lobbyist agenda. Few indeed are the lawmakers who are not afraid to offend mad mothers or big insurance.

When the reporter wrote, "drinking was a factor in 52 percent of the S.C. fatal wrecks" he demonstrated his obvious bias as well as the fact that he didn't investigate the story much before submitting it for publication. Shameful. And what does The State reporter mean by drinking was a factor?

Based on the definition of alcohol-related, we could say that gasoline was a factor, rubber was a factor, metal was a factor, glass was a factor, the car was a factor, the road, the air, the trees, the, the, the, blah, blah, blah - ad nauseam.

Here's a parting riddle to consider regarding the insanity of statistical manipulation and the current DUI hysteria. As mentioned earlier, approximately 1.5 million Americans are arrested for DUI each year. According to MADD, for every DUI arrest made, there are an estimated 722 other drunk driving instances that go undetected. If this is true, then it is fair to assume that there are 1,083,000,000 DUI instances each year across the United States. That's One Billion, Eighty-Three Million drunk driving occurrences. Now, keeping in mind all the different scenarios that can feed the alcohol-related traffic fatality statistic database; consider the fact that NHTSA claims that there was 17,419 alcohol-related traffic fatalities in 2003. That would then mean that of the 1,083,000,000 drunk driving instances, a miniscule .000016% resulted in a traffic fatality. Makes drunk driving look down right safe, doesn't it?

While The State appears to hate all things Libertarian, I applaud the South Carolina lawmakers who begrudgingly established the 0.08 legal limit. The punishments for DUI are extreme and illogical. Revoking drivers licenses does little more than put more unlicensed drivers on the roads. Unlicensed drivers turn into uninsured drivers because insurance companies rape convicted drunk drivers by using their conviction to justify absolutely astonishing rates. This doesn't seem to be in the public's best interest does it? Giving the choice, I'd prefer to be involved in a car accident that involved insured drivers versus uninsured drivers - regardless of whether they're drunk or sober - any day of the week!

Let's be reasonable here for a moment. If you lose a loved one as the result of a traffic accident, is your loss any less tragic if it were the result of a distracted driver rather than a drunk driver? I mean if Johnny Hotrod is searching for his favorite CD while doing 50mph in a 35mph zone, and carelessly fails to notice a stop sign, and at that exact moment, your wife, husband, son, daughter, father, or mother is crossing through the intersection and is crushed by Johnny, do you walk away from the cemetery three days later relieved that at least Johnny was sober? Thats just plain stupid, isn't it? Yet Johnny might do 90 days to 6 months in jail, maybe. If he was cool under pressure, he could have fed the police a plausible alibi, perhaps even convincing the cop that the whole thing was an unfortunate accident. But if Johnny was drunk, he'd be looking at 5 to 10 years in prison. Something just doesn't add up, does it?

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