In late 2018, Utah lowered its drunk-driving limit from a B.A.C. (blood-alcohol content) of .08 to .05.
A year after the law was implemented, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that fatal car crashes in the state had dropped by nearly 20 percent.
“Believe me, I never thought we would see a significant effect in Utah,” said James Fell, a principle research scientist who studies traffic safety at the independent research organization NORC, at the University of Chicago. The state had one of the lowest impaired driving rates in the United States to begin with, he added.
Utah is currently the only state in the country with a .05 drunk-driving limit; everywhere else, the limit remains .08. But internationally, Utah is far from alone. Australia, France, Thailand and about 50 other countries have a B.A.C. limit of .05, and in more than 30 other countries, the limit is even lower.
With U.S. drunk-driving deaths rising in recent years (about 33 percent between 2019 and 2022, according to the most recent data), several other states — including New York, Washington, Hawaii and Connecticut — are now considering similar legislation to lower the legal driving limit.
“We’re losing, on the highways these days, more than 13,000 people a year,” said Thomas Chapman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. “I mean, it’s just an astonishing number.” In 2022, drunk-driving accidents accounted for 32 percent of all traffic fatalities.
The current national drunk-driving limit wasn’t established until 2000, when Congress passed a bill that required all states to set their B.A.C. limit at .08 in order to continue receiving federal highway funds. Before then, some states used .08, while others used .10.
Even at that time, some researchers and advocates thought the limit should be as low as .05, said Linda Degutis, a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and a former director focused on injury prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The .08 was pretty much a compromise,” she said.
Experts say that the science strongly supports a lower B.A.C. limit. Multiple studies testing people’s cognitive faculties when drinking have found that both sustained attention and multitasking are already impaired at .05. People become drowsy at even lower levels of intoxication. And on driving simulators used in a lab setting, people perform worse with any amount of alcohol in their system.
Looking at how these impairments affect people’s driving in the real world, one study reported that people with a B.A.C. of .05 had a 38 percent higher risk of getting into a car crash than those with no alcohol in their system; at .08, the risk rose to 169 percent. And an analysis Mr. Fell conducted in 2017 estimated that lowering the legal limit nationally to .05 could reduce alcohol-related fatal crashes by 11 percent, saving nearly 1,800 lives per year.
Roughly speaking, a B.A.C. of .05 results from consuming two drinks in two hours for a 150-pound female, and three drinks in two hours for a 200-pound male. Body weight, how much time has passed since your first drink and whether you have food in your stomach all influence your B.A.C. And remember: “A drink” means one 12-ounce beer with 5 percent alcohol, one 5-ounce glass of wine or one 1.5-ounce shot of spirits. Stronger beers, generous pours of wine and mixed drinks with several shots will all push your B.A.C. higher.
A lower B.A.C. limit is supported by a range of groups, including the National Transportation Safety Board, the National Safety Council, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Even AB InBev, the beer company that owns brands including Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois, isn’t against lowering the limit.
According to the experts interviewed for this article, one of the main opponents is the hospitality industry, which argues that a B.A.C. limit of .05 would hurt restaurants and bars. (National and state alcohol and restaurant groups did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) During the push for a national limit in 2000, Dr. Degutis said, industry representatives argued that if the limit was too low, people wouldn’t be able to go out and have a glass of wine or a cocktail with dinner.
“We know that it takes a little more than one glass of wine or one cocktail to get to a B.A.C. of .05,” Dr. Degutis said. “But, you know, this was the argument: that this was going to really damage their economy, damage their ability to attract people.”
In Utah, there was little evidence that this happened. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report found that alcohol sales in the state continued on a steady upward trajectory from 2012 to 2020 and were not disrupted by the passage or implementation of the law. That study provided “important” evidence that a lower B.A.C. limit did not have a “negative impact on alcohol sales or tax revenues or tourism,” Mr. Chapman said.
Rather than drinking less, the report stated, people were more likely to find an alternate way home.
In approximately half of all fatal crashes involving alcohol, drivers have a B.A.C. of .15 or higher, so a lower limit may not deter the worst offenders any more than the current laws do. However, it could influence those who are mindful of the limit but might not recognize when they are impaired.
“The reason it works is that it serves as a general deterrent to drinking and driving,” Mr. Fell said. “People don’t know exactly what .05 means; all they know is that the limit for drinking has been lowered and they’d better be careful.”
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