Driving while alcohol impaired : a preliminary exploration of the issues and possible approaches.

Brady, Patricia · 1989 · ROSA P / Virginia Transportation Research Council (VTRC)

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This 1989 report by Patricia Brady, commissioned by the Virginia Transportation Research Council, explores the feasibility and design of a "Driving While Alcohol Impaired" (DWAI) statute for Virginia. The research was motivated by a gap in existing law: under Virginia’s *per se* statute, drivers with a blood alcohol content (BAC) below 0.10% were rarely arrested or convicted, even if visibly impaired. The report aims to determine if a lower threshold for prosecution is scientifically justified and legally viable, reviewing scientific evidence on alcohol’s effects on driving and analyzing existing DWAI laws in eight other states and the District of Columbia. The methodology involved a comprehensive review of scientific and medical literature published primarily after 1984, focusing on studies of alcohol’s impact on driving performance. The author also examined legislative data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to categorize existing DWAI statutes into four types: DWAI as a lesser included offense of DUI, DWAI as a separate offense for all drivers, DWAI as a separate offense for drivers under 21, and lowering the presumptive BAC level for DUI. Additionally, the report analyzed epidemiological data from the Fatal Accident Reporting System and case law regarding the constitutionality of age-based driving classifications. The findings indicate that scientific evidence supports impairment at BAC levels well below 0.10%. Laboratory studies on divided-attention tasks showed significant impairment at BACs as low as 0.041%, with a meta-analysis of over 175 studies concluding that BACs of 0.05% and higher impair major components of driver performance. Epidemiological data revealed that younger drivers (ages 16–24) are disproportionately represented in alcohol-related fatal crashes, with a BAC of 0.05% tripling their accident probability compared to doubling it for the general population. The report also found that age-based DWAI statutes likely withstand constitutional challenges under the "rational basis" standard, as protecting public safety is a legitimate state goal. The report concludes that Virginia should enact a DWAI statute to sanction drivers impaired below the 0.10% threshold, arguing that society’s interest in highway safety outweighs individual drinking preferences. It outlines four legislative approaches, noting that a DWAI statute could serve as a lesser included offense to prevent dismissals, target younger drivers with license suspensions, or function as an independent offense with lower penalties. The author recommends further study on the impact of such statutes on police resources and enforcement consistency before implementation.

Key finding

Scientific studies demonstrate that alcohol impairs major components of driver performance, including divided-attention capabilities, at blood alcohol concentrations of 0.05% and lower.

Methodology

review

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• drowsy as impairment
• dui enforcement
• alcohol
• illicit drugs
• alcohol detection systems

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Applied Guidance: policy recommendations