Good afternoon! It's wonderful to be back home in Charlottesville. Although, my Brother Kenneth, who volunteered with the Western Albemarle Rescue Squad, may disown me for setting foot at the other squad house in town!

I've never asked Ken for details about the crashes he worked, but I know that some were pretty gruesome. I can only imagine how hard it is for Ken and for the volunteers here at CARS to deal with the sights, sounds, and smells of a tragic car crash, especially those crashes involving impaired drivers.

Alcohol-related crashes are some of the most violent car crashes imaginable, and as MADD has said, impaired driving is the most frequently committed violent crime. Someone dies every 30 minutes and someone is injured every 2 minutes from an alcohol-related crash. But this is not something we all just have to accept!

As the Federal agency responsible for investigating transportation accidents and making recommendations to improve transportation safety, the National Transportation Safety Board has made impaired driving, especially when it involves the hard core drinking driver, a priority. The Board defines a hard core drinking driver as someone arrested or convicted more than once for an impaired driving offense, or someone arrested for a high blood alcohol concentration (0.15% or higher). Hard core drinking drivers repeatedly demonstrate that they cannot separate their drinking from their driving, putting all of us at great risk.

In response to this problem, the Safety Board has developed and recommends a model program to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving hard core drinking drivers, and that model program is on the Board's list of Most Wanted safety recommendations. Key elements of the model program include strong laws, such as those sponsored by Delegate Bell, and strong enforcement efforts, such as Checkpoint Strikeforce.

This past legislative session, Delegate Bell's efforts were crucial in improving Virginia's impaired driving laws. He sponsored the bill that lowered Virginia's high BAC limit from 0.20% to 0.15%. You may ask what difference that makes, but consider this. It takes a man weighing 180 pounds 6 drinks in one hour on an empty stomach to reach 0.15%. This is not social drinking; this is someone with an alcohol problem. And a lower high BAC limit means that a person is held accountable and made to recognize his or her alcohol problem sooner. In Virginia in 2002, there were more than 8,000 drivers who tested between 0.15% and 0.20%, more than 8,000 people who will now face stiffer penalties because Delegate Bell took action!

Delegate Bell also sponsored or co-sponsored legislation that will ensure appropriate license suspensions for multiple offenders, authorize vehicle confiscation for third time offenders, and impose stiffer jail sentences for individuals convicted of their third offense within 5 years. The Board recognizes that we have a real partner in the fight against impaired driving in Delegate Rob Bell, whose legislation will make all of us safer. And we look forward to working with him again on highway safety issues, such as Delegate Bell's legislation to prohibit underage alcohol consumption.

Virginia's police officers will now take the lead in reducing impaired driving by vigorously enforcing these new laws through Checkpoint Strikeforce. Through weekly sobriety checkpoints, with special emphasis periods around Independence Day, Halloween, and New Year's, Virginia's officers will arrest impaired drivers, save lives, and make our roads safer. I want to thank all of you, the legislators, police officers, EMTs, and many others, for all that you do!

For his extraordinary leadership, I now want to present to Delegate Bell this citation, which reads: FOR OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP IN PROMOTING AND ADOPTING LAWS TO REDUCE ALCOHOL-RELATED FATALITIES IN VIRGINIA, ESPECIALLY THOSE INVOLVING HARD CORE DRINKING DRIVERS.