In the 1980s and 1990s push A movement to lower the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit to get behind the wheel has taken the country by storm. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) be formed In 1980 and 2000, President Bill Clinton Sign It enacted a nationwide .08 BAC limit into law, making federal highway funding a condition of state compliance with the new limit.
Drunk driving rates are much lower today than they were a few decades ago. They have fallen by about half since the early 1980s. According to ~ National Institutes of Health. Nevertheless, the debate over legal limits has been rekindled, and a campaign is underway to further lower the BAC level allowed for driving.
World Health Organization (WHO) 2024 Global Status Report Research on alcohol and drug use disorders has attracted attention, noting that most countries have moved to a BAC legal limit of 0.05 or less. Media outlets such as: The New York Times and National Geographic We quickly ran an article about America’s seemingly odd situation when it comes to drinking and driving.
Lower bound advocates cite laboratories and simulators. research They demonstrated that alcohol impairment begins at BAC levels below 0.08 and concluded that lowering the legal limit would reduce accidents and deaths. study Based on international blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels, they concluded that lowering the U.S. BAC level to 0.05 would result in an 11% reduction in alcohol-related crashes.
Utah is First state The goal is to lower the BAC limit to 0.05 by 2018, which is an important case study of what would happen if more states followed suit. WHO estimates that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will reduce the BAC limit to 0.05 by 2022. study A change in Utah law has led to a dramatic drop in drunk driving deaths, dropping by nearly 20 percent.
As expected, that wasn’t all.
Despite being published in 2022, the NHTSA study tracked: 1 year .05 Post-Data: Utah DUI Fatalities in 2019 (the .05 law was passed in 2018 and went into effect in 2019). From 2016-2018, the Beehive State averaged just over 33 DUI fatalities per year, with 48 fatalities in 2018. In 2019, the first year the .05 law went into effect, the number of fatalities plummeted to 27, and the law was hailed as a huge success.
But after that dramatic drop, Utah’s drunk driving death toll has recovered to 48. In 2020. In 2021, there were 61 deaths. 2022Nationwide, 69 deaths were recorded.
But two things important The New York Times clauses Since the beginning of the year, the nation’s average BAC levels have been above average, with Utah citing a 20% drop in drunk driving deaths in 2019 but saying nothing. Everything about Utah’s drunk driving death data since then. As mentioned earlier. National Geographic The article and the WHO’s much-publicized report also failed to acknowledge the existence of Utah data beyond 2019, despite a publication date of 2024.
Local Salt Lake Tribune Columnist Robert Gehrke, on the other hand, is inclined to say: situation truth:
In the four years since the law went into effect, 187 people have died in alcohol-related accidents, about 20 percent more than before the law passed, and the past three years have been the highest on record.
Of course, I am not saying that the law should be held accountable. The driver should be held accountable. But the law is ineffective because it does not target the real problem: people who drink and drive far beyond the legal limit.
Half of all drunk drivers involved in fatal car accidents are extremely intoxicated. Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) 0.15 or higherIn contrast, only 16 percent of people involved in fatal accidents had a BAC level of . 0.08 or less (And the number of people falling in the .05 to .07 range could be even lower, as they are thought to be affected by the move to the legal limit of .05).
The most serious drunk driving offenders are also often Repeat offender It seems to be unaffected by the legal limit. About 30% of people arrested for DUI in Utah have been arrested for DUI before, and 10% have been arrested more than once. This is a political reality that almost no one wants to deal with. Couples having a glass or two of wine with dinner are not the problem. People who are well over the legal limit, and often repeat offenders, are causing most of the carnage on America’s roads. In fact, even Candice Lightner, founder of MADD, opposes this proposal. State “It’s unrealistic to go around arresting everyone for 0.05.”
Those who advocate lowering the legal limit might argue that even one life saved by a lower BAC is worth all the costs associated with more DUI arrests. However, even if this logic is adopted, penalties in the .05 to .07 range could be reduced, or violations could be converted to civil fines rather than criminal penalties.
No one wants to see more drunk driving deaths in the United States, but we can’t reduce the number of deaths if we ignore the data.
