This week, House and Senate conferees agreed to set a national .08 blood alcohol level to define drunken driving, and to penalize states that do not adopt the standard by holding back on some of their share of federal highway funds. Both houses are expected to pass the measure. This agreement is an outrage for two reasons. First, states are supposed to write their own drunken-driving laws.
Different states have different motorists, different roadways and different problems.
House GOP leader Dick Armey tried to defeat the measure on states' rights grounds. It shouldn't be conditioned on other things. Enough Repubs caved, and so the federal government grows larger. Second, while Mothers Against Drunk Driving claims the bill will save some 500 lives per year, it is not clear that it will. California's drunken-driving fatalities fell from 2,509 in 1989, when the level was .10, to 2,382 in 1990.