Senate OKs National Blood-Alcohol Limit

The Senate voted Thursday to set the first-ever national blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving and to block administration attempts to reduce the hours truckers can spend driving each day.

The $54.7-billion spending bill to fund highway, rail, aviation and Coast Guard programs in fiscal year 2001 would require states to adopt a 0.08% blood-alcohol content level as their legal intoxication standard. Those failing to do so by 2004 would begin losing part of their highway trust fund money.

Eighteen states, including California, and the District of Columbia have 0.08% limits for being legally drunk, while 32 states have less stringent 0.10% limits. The White House supports the 0.08% standard and has urged Congress to make it federal policy.

The Senate bill, which passed 99 to 0, must still be reconciled with the House transportation spending bill that passed last month. The House bill does not contain the drunken driving provision, nor the ban on proposed regulations that would revise 60-year-old rules on trucker and bus driver operating hours.

The House bill, unlike its Senate counterpart, has language barring the Transportation Department from studying whether it should raise fuel efficiency standards for cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Sens. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), after urging the Senate to oppose the House ban, worked out a compromise with Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) and others concerned about how the standards would affect the auto industry.

They agreed that in talks with the House, the Senate position will be that the Transportation Department and the National Academy of Sciences study fuel efficiency standards and related issues such as vehicle safety, but that Congress must approve new standards.

The Transportation Department’s proposed rules on trucking operations would allow long-distance operators no more than 12 hours of driving in 24 hours, with a two-hour break within the period. Current rules allow up to 16 hours behind the wheel in 24 hours.

The American Trucking Assn.’s Senior Vice President Jim Whittinghill said truckers support an update, but the proposed change would “not work in the real world.”