Good afternoon Chairman Vallario and members of the Committee on Judiciary.  It is my pleasure to be here in Annapolis and talk about the National Transportation Safety Board’s recommendations for addressing hard core drinking drivers.

The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent Federal agency charged by Congress to investigate transportation accidents, determine their probable cause, and make safety recommendations to prevent their recurrence.  The recommendations that arise from our investigations and safety studies are our most important product.  The Safety Board cannot mandate implementation of these recommendations.  However, in our 39-year history, organizations and government bodies have adopted more than 80 percent of our recommendations.

The Alcohol-Highway Safety Problem

The Safety Board has recognized for many years that motor vehicle crashes are responsible for more deaths than crashes in all other transportation modes combined.  More than 90 percent of all transportation related deaths each year result from highway crashes.  Each year, about 40 percent of highway deaths nationwide are alcohol-related.  Alcohol-related fatalities increased from 16,694 in 2004 to 16,885 in 2005, and the number of alcohol-related fatalities remains substantially higher than in 1999, when approximately 15,790 people died in alcohol-related crashes.

The emotional toll on families is staggering, but impaired driving also has a financial impact.  According to calculations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the lifetime cost to society for each fatality is over $977,000; alcohol-related crashes cost society billions of dollars.  While the affected individual covers some of these costs, overall, NHTSA estimates that those not directly involved in crashes pay for nearly three-quarters of all crash costs, primarily through insurance premiums, taxes, and travel delay.  Clearly, much needs to be done to reduce this ongoing tragedy.

The Safety Board is particularly concerned with hard core drinking drivers, who are involved in more than 54 percent of alcohol-related fatalities.  The Board defines hard core drinking drivers as individuals who drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.15 percent or greater, or who are arrested for driving while intoxicated within 10 years of a prior driving while impaired (DWI) arrest.  From 1983 through 2005, more than 183,000 people died in crashes involving hard core drinking drivers.  Most experts agree that impaired drivers persist in their behavior because these drivers believe that they will not be caught and/or convicted.  That perception is based on reality.  NHTSA estimates that on average, an individual makes about 1,000 drinking driving trips before being arrested.

Over the last 20 years, the Safety Board has studied the impaired driving issue on numerous occasions, most recently in 2000 when the Board focused on hard core drinking drivers.  In that report, the Board examined a variety of countermeasures used by the States to identify which of these actions have been effective, and recommended a model program to reduce hard core drinking driving.  The problem of hard core drinking drivers is complex; no single countermeasure by itself appears to reduce recidivism and crashes sufficiently.  We need a comprehensive system of prevention, apprehension, sanction, and treatment to reduce the crashes, injuries, and fatalities caused by these drivers.

The Value of a Legislative Task Force

Because the impaired driving problem, particularly hard core drinking driving problem, is so complex, because the problem requires a comprehensive solution, and because many impaired driving laws, including in Maryland, are established on an individual and piece-meal basis, the Safety Board supports efforts to establish a task force to review the DWI countermeasure system.  The Board recommended that States establish task forces in 1989, when the decline in alcohol-related fatalities had previously stagnated.

A task force, like the one proposed in House Bill 758, would bring together all the stakeholders who can identify failures with the existing system and identify appropriate, practical solutions.  A task force would examine all the issues in one setting, as opposed to legislative review of individual bills as they come before the Maryland General Assembly.  In addition, a task force could propose necessary administrative and programmatic changes that are not usually addressed in legislation.

Task force reviews work!  Virginia was successful in significantly improving its impaired driving laws in 2004 after convening a Governor’s task force.  Recognizing the existing cumbersome process in his State, Tennessee’s Governor convened a task force in 2006 to simplify the process and address any gaps.  South Carolina will be considering this session legislation that evolved from a task force review.

Conclusion

Over the last several years, Maryland has made some improvements to its impaired driving countermeasure system, but people continue to die and get injured in preventable alcohol-related crashes.  The nation has yet to experience a decline in alcohol-related fatalities similar to the decline in the mid-1990s.  As the Board noted in its 1989 investigation of the Carrollton, Kentucky accident, “If the nation is going to resume the progress made in reducing the incidences of drinking and driving, there needs to be a refocusing on this issue at all levels, especially at the local and State level.”