Originally Posted by
Airbubba
Can you provide a reference for this claim?
I can't help with the above. I do remember reading a piece of research (done in Scandinavia IIRC) which looked at stopping distances at various level of intoxication whilst driving (it was about 15-20 years ago and alas I never bookmarked the report). The slightly surprising finding of the research was that stopping distances were less with some alcohol in the blood rather than zero (can't remember the figures sorry). The authors suggested this was owing to drivers being less inhibited in stamping on the brakes, bringing in the ABS earlier resulting in shorter stopping distances by a small but measurable amount. It didn't mean they were better/safer drivers overall, it was a very specific test under controlled conditions.
At the time Sweden had a blood alcohol limit of 20mg alcohol/100ml of blood for driving (same as the 0.02 limit mentioned above?) and I think many pieces of research have show that at that there is no statistically significant increased accident risk up to 20 mg/100ml. The risks do start climbing about that level though. Compare that with most of Europe having drink driving limits of 50 mg/ml and the UK 80 mg/ml !
Each individual reacts differently to alcohol and an individual can react differently on different occasions. 20mg/100ml seems like a sensible limit to me and nobody should object if there was say regular random breath testing.