One for the road

One for the Road is a history of efforts to control drunk driving in the United States. But it begins with a challenge: buy yourself a Breathalyzer, find a responsible friend to keep an eye on you, and start drinking. Most people who try this experiment will feel buzzed or a little drunk well below a blood alcohol level of 0.08%, the current legal limit. Nevertheless, eighty million times annually, drinkers who are this impaired will get into their cars and drive. Close to 15,000 people will die as a result. The author explores why such a situation persists more than a century after anti-drunk-driving efforts began and thirty years after the founding of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). He concludes that America has consistently rejected reasonable strategies to stop drunk driving, preferring instead to preserve the right of "social drinkers" to drive, to allow industry to limit the scope of control efforts, and even to portray drunk drivers as victims. In a world where teenagers and adults, exposed to decades of warnings, still choose to drive while using cell phones, while speeding, and after drinking, this book provides crucial historical lessons for understanding the ongoing epidemic of drunk driving. -- from Book Jacket.