Last Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced its "most wanted" list - policy recommendations that have not been fully implemented - for 2016, according to a press release on the NTSB website.
Among the matters listed are two that are particularly important. The first is the NTSB's affirmation of its recommendation that the amount of alcohol legally permitted in the blood of drivers should be lowered from 0.08 to 0.05 percent. The NTSB says in a paper that "[w]hen it comes to alcohol use, we know that impairment begins before a person's blood alcohol content reaches 0.08 percent, the current legal limit in the United States. In fact, by the time it reaches that level, the risk of a fatal crash has more than doubled. That is why states should lower blood alcohol levels to 0.05 - or even lower".
However, when the permitted level was 0.10, it was promised that the number of accidents would come down if it was reduced to 0.08, but this never happened, noted Sarah Longwell, the managing director of the American.Beverage Institute, according to The Hill.
The second important issue that the NTSB seeks to address is the use of electronic devices such as cell phones while driving. Popular belief had been that the risk to drivers and vehicles was high when a driver used a physical handheld cell phone in his or her ear while driving. And therefore, once people started using hands-free systems to speak over phones, the belief was that the risk associated with using cell phones was greatly mitigated if not altogether eliminated. However, the NTSB thinks otherwise. It feels that even hands-free devices are very distracting and disturb drivers' concentration. Hence, it recommends that all telephone devices (including hands-free equipment) should be completely banned.
Currently, the use of such devices in vehicles is not banned in any jurisdiction, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
