"This week, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended all 50 states decrease the blood alcohol content threshold for drunken driving from 0.08% to 0.05%." (Reference) NTSB's vision is to reduce the number of alcohol-related injurious and fatal automobile accidents.
A CNN Opinion writer notes, "Five drinks [within one hour] raises your [blood alcohol] level to .10%." We can calculate that an average size person would reach a blood alcohol level of 0.05% by imbibing two and one-half drinks.
Question: statistically what has been the blood alcohol range among drunk drivers who have caused an injury or fatality in an alcohol-related car crash.
"In the early 1980s, when grass-roots safety groups brought attention to drunk driving, many states required a 0.15 BAC rate to demonstrated intoxication. But over the next 24 years, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other groups pushed states to adopt the 0.08 BAC standard, the last state falling in line in 2004.
"The number of alcohol-related highway fatalities, meanwhile, dropped from 20,000 in 1980 to 9,878 in 2011, the NTSB said." A greater than 50% drop in fatalities is magnificent. None-the-less, the law of diminishing returns is at work here. Moving from 0.08 to 0.05 should not bring as drastic a drop.
Most important is the issue of increasing the use of checkpoints on our roadways to facilitate finding drunk drivers. Taking more drivers off the road when their blood alcohol is above the current legal limit will be highly effective. I would like to see comparative statistics with just a 50% increase in checkpoints use.
An opposing viewpoint.
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