High BAC Case Shows Ambiguity of Current Legal Definitions

In South Dakota, a woman was found behind the wheel of a vehicle with a blood-alcohol level of .708, a state-record breaking content of nine times the legal limit of .08 percent. While it is generally accepted that a blood-alcohol level of .40 is lethal for about 50 percent of the population, recent cases indicating the strong individual variance of people’s ability to process and tolerate remarkably varying levels of alcohol suggest that perhaps a standard legal percentage is unfair in terms of estimating a person’s functionality while driving after the consumption of alcohol. Conviction for alcohol-impaired driving can result in immediate license suspension or revocation; however, under administrative license suspension, if a driver fails or refuses to take a chemical test (such as needed to establish the BAC of an individual), licenses can be taken prior to conviction. These administrative license suspension/revocation laws are currently in place in 41 states, including the state of Tennessee.

As of the current date, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have so-called ‘per se’ laws defining it as a crime to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at or above an established level, 0.08 percent. These per se laws make it an offense in and of itself to drive with a BAC measured at or above the proscribed legal level, regardless of whether the driver exhibits visible signs of intoxication and impairment. As such, these laws make the assumption that all drivers, even experienced drinkers, show impairment in driving ability at .08 blood alcohol content.

In the instance of the South Dakota woman found with a BAC of .708 percent, it is possible to see that tolerance for alcohol varies drastically by individual. Furthermore, in 2005 it has been recorded that a man in Bulgaria had a blood-alcohol level of 0.914 – nearly twice the amount considered to be life-threatening. According to CBC News, the police thought their equipment was broken, because the man, who was being questioned after having been hit by a truck, remained conscious and coherently responded to the officers. Colonel Angel Rangelov, the head of police in the Bulgarian city where the incident occurred, reported that five separate lab tests taken the same day confirmed the man's blood-alcohol level of 0.914.

These incidents, as well as many others found with remarkably high blood alcohol contents, indicate that one’s impairment, as well as tolerance, may also vary quite drastically by individual. While the abovementioned instances involve people who obviously had consumed alcohol at a level that could result in endangerment to themselves and others, the practical application of these incidents to people who are close to that proscribed .08 BAC and who may not exhibit signs of impairment leads one to question whether such individuals are, in fact, impaired, and whether it is fair for there to be these all-encompassing punitive measures such as license suspension/revocation, fines, and/or imprisonment since individual tolerance is so varied. These cases make it clear that assumptions regarding BAC levels are simply wrong; unfortunately for the average citizen, many Federal and State laws are based on and established by those same conjectures. To protect yourself from generalized application of these measures in instances where you feel that you were not impaired or were unfairly stopped, it is important to retain adequate legal representation to combat the same.