After 16 years of racing to car accidents on Rhode Island’s second-busiest rescue team, Peter T. Ginaitt can sense when trouble looms.
Ginaitt, a Warwick firefighter, can feel it when the air is warm and a long weekend approaches. He can almost predict that he will soon be speeding to the site of an alcohol-induced wreck.
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”After 16 years you can tell (it) in the air,” Ginaitt said. ”It’s almost predictable.”
It’s no surprise then that Ginaitt, also a state representative, is one of many people who support a state Senate bill that reduces the threshold at which drivers are considered legally drunk, from the current Blood Alcohol Concentration of .10 to .08.
It’s a measure that has come before the General Assembly every year since 1989, only to be shot down every time. For example, the House Judiciary Committee last month rejected a .08 bill backed by Gov. Lincoln Almond.
But now, Almond and traffic safety advocates have come back with a compromise bill. Meanwhile, the state Traffic Safety Coalition, which represents business, political, and community leaders, has unleashed a $315,000 ad campaign to push .08 and other bills that would stiffen drunken-driving penalties.
But restaurant and tourism lobbyists are battling with equal vigor. They argue that lowering the BAC limit creates a new class of criminals, and does nothing to deal with the problem of alcohol abusers, who cause most alcohol-related traffic deaths.
And locally and nationwide, each side is stepping up the political war over BAC limits that has raged for the past decade.
”There wasn’t a real significant lobby put together until the last three years,” said Edward J. Walsh, Almond’s administrator for the Governor’s Office on Highway Safety, referring to the history of the Rhode Island .08 lobby.
The latest Senate bill that Walsh and the governor support imposes graduated penalties for drivers at different BAC levels, unlike the last bill, which simply dropped the threshold to .08.
Coalition members are supporting their lobbying campaign by placing billboards on state highways and by running television, radio, and print ads through Memorial Day. Money for the ads has come largely from corporate sponsors such as MetLife and Beacon Mutual Insurance Co.
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have passed .08 laws in recent years. Nationally, the movement to lower the BAC limits started in the late 1970s, when alcohol-related deaths accounted for about half of all traffic fatalities, compared to 38.6 percent in 1997, according to the latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics.
Through the efforts of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, all states eventually lowered their limits from .15 to .10. And through further work by MADD and other groups, states such as Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont lowered their levels again in the late 1980s and early ’90s, this time to .08.
Many say the reductions have led to a change in attitude. James C. Ryan, senior program manager at the traffic safety administration’s regional office in Cambridge, Mass., said he sees a difference in attitude from the 1970s, when the view toward drunken driving violations in judicial systems was: ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’
”(They) were reluctant to suspend licenses,” said Ryan, who was a Boston probation officer at the time. “There’s been a sea change culturally.”
It’s changed to the point in which Congress last year nearly passed legislation that would have imposed sanctions on states that refused to pass .08 laws. Restaurant lobbyists battled against it, and Congress instead passed a $500 million incentive program in which states that pass the law would receive additional highway construction funds.
But restaurant industry officials charge that politicians push .08 because it’s good politics, not because it has any real impact on traffic safety. Indeed, government statistics show that most alcohol-related traffic deaths locally and nationwide have occurred when BAC levels were at .10 or above.
But while both sides agree that most deaths occur at the higher BAC levels, they disagree on how impaired people are at the lower levels, and on how many drinks it takes to reach .08. And each side goes to battle armed with statistics.
”I’ve seen all the charts in the world, and they all come out different,” Ginaitt said. “That’s a game of semantics both sides are playing.”
Which is why Ginaitt and others say the arguments should be made on a philosophical, rather than statistical, basis. Supporters of .08 laws say it’s worth going after the lower-level offenders.
But others say the state should attack problem drinkers first.
House judiciary members over the years have agreed. No .08 bill has made it out of the committee. And this time around, even some supporters on the committee said they doubted anything will change.
”I’m not optimistic,” said committee member Joseph M. McNamara, D-Dist. 29. “I don’t know whether the committee will be any more supportive of the progressive penalty bill than the straight .08.”
Last month, just before the committee was to vote on the straight .08 bill, the Traffic Safety Coalition brought a 117-pound woman to the State House to drink two six-ounce glasses of wine over two hours in an attempt to prove that it’s possible to drink socially without hitting the .08 mark.
After two hours, the woman’s BAC level was .031, said David Russell, executive director of MADD Rhode Island.
But the display was exactly what turned off committee member John S. Simonian, D-Dist. 27, who said it’s unreasonable to assume that most people take two hours to drink two glasses of wine. Lowering the limit would make it too difficult for people to tell if they are violating the law, he said.
”That test was so phony, they must have thought they were talking to complete idiots. It really destroys their credibility with me,” Simonian said. “I have a problem with inventing a law that people don’t know that they’re violating.” But some committee members have changed their minds over time. Eugene F. Garvey, D-Dist. 81, is one of them. At one time he was concerned that a .08 law would make criminals out of social drinkers. Now, that doesn’t concern him.
”I had come to the reasoning (that) drinking and driving just don’t go together,” he said. ”We have so many young people killing each other, I believe we, the adults, have to set some kind of example.”
But many argue that the right example would be to deal with alcohol abuse. One of them is Terrance D. Schiavone, president of the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, a Washington, D.C. advocacy group.
Schiavone supports lower BAC limits. But he also said states need to do more to determine the degree of the person’s alcohol problem and offer appropriate treatment immediately.
”We don’t get many opportunities to interact with problem drinkers and drunk drivers in this country,” Schiavone said. “When we do get them we need to do more with them the first time.”
Neil A. Corkery, executive director of the Drug & Alcohol Treatment Association of Rhode Island, agrees. In some cases, he said, the waiting list to get into treatment programs is so long that offenders have already gotten their licenses back by time they are accepted.
Rhode Island needs to do a better job of coordinating its resources so that people who need help can get it sooner, he said.
What everyone agrees is upon is that some actions need to be taken to cut into the 16,189 alcohol-related deaths recorded nationwide in 1997. And while both sides hail the progress that has been made, they also agree more needs to be done.
”This isn’t a business where you can afford to rest on your laurels,” Ryan said, adding that with more than 16,000 alcohol-induced deaths two years ago, “it leaves a heck of a lot of room for improvement.”
