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Tuesday, October 24, 2000

Clinton signs 0.08 drunken driving limit

States that don't comply will lose highway money

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Clinton signed a bill Monday setting a tough national standard for drunken driving, saying the new legal limit of 0.08 percent will save 500 lives a year and force Americans to take more care when they drink.
   States that refuse to impose the standard by 2004 will lose millions of dollars in federal highway construction money. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have a 0.08 percent limit.
   Thirty-one states define drunken driving as 0.10 limit blood alcohol content or do not set a specific standard.
   "This is a very good day for the United States," Clinton said. He called the new standard "the biggest step to toughen drunk driving laws and reduce alcohol-related crashes since a national minimum drinking age was established a generation ago."
   Clinton was joined in a Rose Garden ceremony by Millie Webb, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and MADD members who have lost relatives in alcohol-related crashes.
   Webb lost her 4_¤ -year-old daughter and 19-month-old nephew and suffered a broken neck and burns over 75 percent of her body 28 years ago in an accident caused by a drinking driver.
   The bill signing climaxed a fierce three-year battle in Congress.
   The American Beverage Institute, an association of restaurant operators, called the new law "an attack on social drinkers."
  

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