It is pretty well established that impaired drivers are involved in the majority of traffic crashes. Why not say accidents, because most have a cause, usually driver error. We used to say drunk, (drunken?) driving but now we are finding a virtual pharmacopeia in some drivers. There are claims that half the drivers on the road are legally drunk, but no data to back up the claim. If half the drivers are drunk and most are not crashing then perhaps our definition of drunk is flawed. Stop right there. I’m not about to condone compromised driving. What we presume, but can’t document is that impaired drivers are disproportionately involved in crashes. This is because we do not know really the level of impairment of the general population of drivers.
Almost everyone agrees that stopping the impaired from driving would be a good thing. Like every other good thing, it gets complicated. A fundamental in engineering is that a problem well-defined is half-solved. Police have objective field sobriety tests that have a good correlation with detecting impairment that affects driving. Things like, stand on one foot with eyes closed and touch your nose, or walk a straight line.
As effective as these tests are, defense lawyers are adept at getting a favorable verdict. So the prosecution wants to emphasize a scientific litmus-test. Most states consider a person impaired if their blood alcohol level is 0.08 percent tested within two hours after driving. Some jurisdictions want to lower the standard to 0.05 percent and some foreign laws say “any alcohol” a criterion on a collision course with science as tests become more sensitive. There are problems with these criteria, but I will refrain so as not to appear to condone impaired driving. The correlation two hours later can be troublesome. The obvious objection is that not everyone reacts to alcohol equally. Some are unconscious at 0.02 percent and some habitual users function well at high levels. A person might be seriously impaired with very little alcohol or from something else entirely. Several substances come to mind and there are more almost daily. Most drug testing is not quantitative therefore not definitive; false positives are common. There are new designer drugs for which no test exists or may not be even possible. Some people are incompetent drivers stone cold sober.
In politics, of course, the reaction to failed policy is lots more of the same. There is a proposal in the Legislature that would define as a drug “any substance that can impair a person’s ability to operate a vehicle.” It is tempting to list the absurdities here, e.g. sugar. That could be a party game. Driving under the influence of children?
How about a robotic measure of impairment? Measure things like attentiveness and reaction time with a scientific device, not a possibly subjective human. It can be done. Pilots are tested periodically in a simulator that tests how they react to foreseeable problems. Of course, that is not practical in the field. A tour bus company in San Diego had a table-top simulator for drivers. Each time a driver came to work he took a few minutes to take the test. Test below a certain score don’t drive today, no questions asked.
Again, too much for the field, but what is practicable is a portable device that tests impairment rather than blood chemistry. Such tests are possible with smart phones that can already judge slurred speech, reaction times, memory, coordination or unsteadiness, think videogames. Testing could even be built into cars. Can’t pass the test, car won’t start, or maybe won’t go over 14 mph. (We don’t want to strand people unnecessarily.) Unfortunately, like so many other things, establishment resists change if it encroaches on their comfort zone.
The important thing is to keep the impaired from driving, not to diagnose the possible source of impairment, or penalize people for something irrelevant.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a semi monthly column for West Hawaii Today. E-mail obenskik@gmail.com
