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Show Here's What They Think of the Draft Drunken Driving On Increase ' Despite Laws Forbidding It By DR. MILTON D. KRAMER Assistant Director, Center for Safety Education, New York University This is the fifth of a series of 10 articles on street and highway safety, written by nationally recognized accident prevention specialists and published by this newspaper in the interests of greater traffic safety. Operating a motor vehicle upon streets anJ highways while intoxicated is universally prohibited by law, yet accidents acci-dents from this cause are on the increase. A driver who has w-; : y -. " & AS" ix ifmrH" iyyL 1 1 if 1 - . Utest wrinkle in White House picketing is this group of men, dressed in Uncle Sam suits, who loose-step through their tour of duty. Representing the War Registers League of New York City ' " they protested passage of peace-time draft legislation. ' been drinking is found to be in- volved in one out of every five fatal traffic accidents in the United States. Pedestrians, too, have contributed to this bad record. One out of every four adult pedestrians killed last year had been drinking. That intoxication is now one of the leading causes of death and injury on the highway is unquestioned. un-questioned. Control of the drinking driver problem has been complicated by a number of factors. First of all, enforcement is hampered because it is difficult to identify drivers who are under the influence of alcohol until some error in driving has been commited or an accident acci-dent occurs. Then, too, lack of public consciousness of the seriousness serious-ness of the problem has delayed the establishment of effective countermeasures. Law enforcement enforce-ment which does not have substantial sub-stantial public backing has always failed in this country. The fact that only a very small percentage of the populace, in all probability, is fully aware of the gravity of the intoxication problem in its relation re-lation to motor vehicle accidents has had a pronounced retarding effect upon the legislator, police officer, prosecutor, judge and jury. Coupled with these basic problems prob-lems are others of exceptional importance. The absence of needed legislation narrows the field of police investigation and necessarily neces-sarily limits the horizon of judicial decision. Again, loopholes in existing exist-ing legislation permit the guilty fo escape and, all too frequently, the innocent to suffer. Such a situation destroys police morale and nurtures antagonism between the police, the prosecution and the courts. This, in turn, engenders an unfavorable public attitude. Many drivers still believe that the term "drunken driver" applies only to a person who is dead drunk or almost hopelessly disabled. dis-abled. Such is not the case, since persons who are very drunk are seldom abie - to drrveat all.-In?'-vestigations of accidents involving drinking drivers reveal that the greater menace is the individual who has drunk enough to have a false feeling of confidence. In reality, even a little alcohol slows down physical reactions to the extent of making a driver unsafe. For example, a recent study revealed: first, that nearly half of the drivers involved in personal injury accidents had been drinking drink-ing to some degree; and, second, that the chances of such persons being involved in acidents increased in-creased so rapidly that the driver with an alcohol concentration of 15 percent or more in his blood was 55 times more likely to become be-come involved in a personal injury accident than the non-drinking driver. Correction of this situation rests with public acceptance of the principle that "alcohol and gasoline gaso-line do not mix." Competent scientific research has shown that human coordination (ability to carry on several activities at once) and ability to judge distances are affected for the worse when exposed ex-posed to only a relatively small amount of alcohol. Every driver owes it to himself, to his family, to the occupants of his car and to the other users of the highway to refrain from driving after drinking. |