Momentum is growing for a nation-wide campaign against drunken driving.
President Reagan’s formation of a presidential commission sharpened the focus, but other initiatives also seek action to combat drunken driving as a serious hazard to public health and safety.
Reagan’s action followed a petition to him initiated by Reps, Jim Hansen, R-Utah and Michael D. Barnes. D-Md. and signed by 300 members of Congress.
Now Barnes has joined with Rep. James J. Howard, D-N.J. and 14 other members of the House to introduce legislation encouraging states to develop detailed preventive and corrective programs.
Declaring drunk driving is an “epidemic,” Howard told the House that “fatality statistics are shocking” and that “over the past 10 years the number killed on our highways in motor vehicle crashes involving alcohol has averaged 25,000 per year. In 1980 over 650,000 were injured in alcohol-related crashes.”
The bill sets up incentive grants to states from the federal highway trust fund to encourage community-based alcohol traffic safety programs.
Among other news events and comments:
– Wyoming’s 1982 legislature approved stiffer penalties for drunken driving and related fatalities.
– The Wall Street Journal reported that drunk driving, “cause of 70 fatalities a day,” is under rising attack and that citizens groups are pressing for harsher penalties.
– A Gallup Poll says a majority of adults living in state where 18 or 19-year-olds can legally purchase alcoholic beverages believe the legal age should be raised.
– Paul Harvey said awhile back that more Americans under 34 die as a result of drunk driving than from cancer “or any other cause.”
All this indicates the setting is right for a crackdown. Historically the trouble has been that anti-drunk-driving and anti-highway fatality campaigns have been “come and go,” lacking continuity.
As far back as 1904 at the dawn of the automobile age, a study concluded: “Inebriates and moderate drinkers are the most incapable of all persons to drive motor wagons.”
And as late as the 1970s the Transportation Department, prodded by Congress, put $88 million into 35 communities or whole states to train police, prosecutors, and judges in handling drunk-driving cases. But the program withered in 1976.
These are signs the current effort has a broader base and could be more sustained.
The Howard-Barnes bill already has won endorsement of the National Safety Council. MAAD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). RID (Remove Intoxicated Drivers), the National Association of Governors Highway Safety Representatives, and other public and private groups.
MAAD, based in Sacramento with 37 chapters in 14 states, monitors drunk-driving cases in court, urges legislatures to pass tougher new laws, and calls for anti-alcohol programs in schools. It expects to be around for a long time.
The Gallup Poll reports that some of the states which lowered the drinking age to 18 or 19 have experienced an increase in problem drinking by teenagers “including a rise in the number of young drivers convicted of driving while intoxicated.”
According to the poll, an estimated 3.3 million American teenagers have serious drinking problems; 8,000 young people are killed each year in alcohol-related traffic accidents, and mother 40,000 are disfigured.
The facts obviously justify a concerted drive to control the over-all problem. Will the leadership be strong enough and public support sufficient and determined enough this time to successfully accomplish the task?