ABSTRACT
Driving after drinking is a unique activity for the criminal law to deal with. Unlike most other crimes, it is not unanimously perceived as bad or wrong; otherwise, so many drivers would not engage in it. In 1962, a committee of the Canadian Medical Association issued a report recommending that legislation be enacted making it "unlawful to drive a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of more than 0.05%" and which "makes submission to a breath test mandatory when requested by law enforcement officers." A rare example of a piece of legislation was highly influenced by forensic science. The Grand Rapids Study included factors such as age, socioeconomic status, and education that interact with alcohol as accident causation factors. It concluded, however, that the contribution of these factors diminishes as the BAC increases and disappears at BACs exceeding 0.08%.
