Regional

Survivors of the nation's deadliest alcohol-related highway crash are expected to attend a public memorial service in a central Kentucky town on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy.
   
The service is set for Tuesday evening at North Hardin High School at Radcliff.
   
Twenty-seven people died when the church bus they were in was hit by a drunken driver on May 14, 1988, along a rural stretch of Interstate 71 near Carrollton, Ky.
   
Forty people, mostly youngsters, escaped the burning bus. The group had spent the day at Kings Island amusement park in Ohio and was headed home to Radcliff when their bus was hit by a pickup truck driven by Larry Mahoney.
   
Mahoney survived and was convicted of assault, manslaughter and wanton endangerment. He was released from prison in 1999.

On the 25th anniversary of the nation's deadliest drunk driving crash, federal safety officials are pushing for tougher DUI laws. 

The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending that states lower the benchmark for determining when a driver is intoxicated.  NTSB chair Deborah Hersman says hundreds of lives could be saved each year by lowering the blood alcohol level.

"We can choose to accept the senseless and needless losses or we choose to act," Hersman remarks.

The NTSB is also pushing for stiffer drunk driving penalties, including laws requiring first-time offenders to have ignition locking devices. 

The NTSB recommendations come 25 years after a drunk driver travelling on the wrong side  of I-71 in Carrollton, Kentucky slammed head-on into a bus carrying passengers home from a church youth trip.  Twenty-seven people died, 24 of them children.