Roads Safer When Drunk Drivers Immediately Lose License to Kill

Nearly 40 percent of all fatal traffic accidents in the U.S. involve drinking, resulting in annual death toll of 17,000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Yet, according to a recent survey by the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, 17 percent of drivers age 21 and over admit to getting behind the wheel after consuming alcohol or using illegal drugs at least once a year. A surefire way to prevent at least some of such accidents? Immediately take away the license of anyone who fails a breath test, a move that already saves at least 800 lives a year, says a new study...

...Wagenaar and fellow U.F. epidemiologist Mildred Maldonado-Molina compared 26 years of federal crash data from 46 states with driver's license suspension laws. "We basically did 46 studies" estimating the impact of suspension laws on alcohol-related accidents for each state and then aggregated the results, Wagenaar says. Their findings, published in the August issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, confirm that laws mandating immediate license suspension reduce the number of drinking-and-driving fatalities by 5 percent, indicating that the measures appear to encourage people to hesitate before boozing and driving. Researchers say the laws seem to deter both social drinkers and carousers...

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ThreeBeans said:

I'd like to see an immediate minimal 6-month suspension, complete with certain volunteer activities, rehab and reparations if you want your license back after 6 months.

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