Community-Coalition On Drug Awareness
Educating Communities Through
Awareness-Acknowledgement-Action
The Deadliest Drug
GOVERNING THE STATES AND LOCALITIES
Most Americans have a general sense that drunken driving isn’t as bad a problem as it was a generation ago. But few realize how much those numbers changed in a relatively short time.
- 10,497: The number of fatal alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2016, the highest since 2009.
- 88,000: The approximate number of people who die annually of alcohol-related causes, including traffic accidents and homicides.
- 62%: The increase in stand-alone DWI courts from 2009 to 2015.
The American Beverage Institute flatly opposes a lower BAC limit. “The penalties for drunk driving are very steep, for good reason,” says Sarah Longwell, the institute’s managing director. “But if you recategorize .05 as a per se DWI violation, then you’re talking about putting people in jail, and mandating they install an ignition interlock, and hiking their insurance rates, and giving them $10,000 in fines for having one drink.” Instead of punishing drivers who engage in moderate drinking, Longwell argues that states should focus their limited resources on the binge drinkers and repeat DWI offenders who are responsible for most fatal alcohol crashes.
The National Transportation Safety Board rejects this argument and continues to advocate for a lower limit. The board notes that the U.S. has a higher rate of alcohol-impaired traffic fatalities than other industrialized nations, many of which use .05 as their legal BAC limit. Last year, researchers at the University of Chicago took traffic safety data from other countries that use the .05 limit and extrapolated what might happen if every state in the U.S. adopted the same standard. They concluded that fatal alcohol-related crashes would decline 11.1 percent, avoiding more than 1,000 deaths per year. (For its part, the American Beverage Institute said the researchers exaggerated the potential deterrence effect of a lower limit.)
Nonetheless, the public safety benefits caught the attention of Utah lawmakers. “It’s not about drinking,” says Rep. Thurston, the sponsor of the state’s new .05 BAC law. “It’s about not driving after you drink -- and it’s ultimately about saving lives.”