Lower the legal DUI limit

I agree with Durango Police Chief Brice Current in his recent letter (Telegraph, March 12) on drinking alcohol and then driving when he wrote: “In a town with rideshare services, taxis, designated drivers and friends who will gladly pick you up, there is simply no excuse anymore.”

Exactly.

However, the problem is that the law itself still enables a drinking-and-driving culture with the legal blood alcohol volume of 0.08%.

Research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), among many other similar studies, shows that impairment begins much lower than this 0.08% legal limit.

At even just 0.02%, drivers are shown to experience some decline in visual functions and the ability to multitask. At 0.05%, research shows that coordination is reduced and tracking moving objects becomes more difficult.

And yet, we are OK to allow driving with further worsening conditions at 0.08%?

Culturally, we need to move beyond seeing this BAC as a legal upper limit because with it, the law continues to tell people “It’s OK to drink and drive” – even while we know what damage “a 2-ton weapon” (to quote Current again) can do to people’s lives.

Now, take Utah, for example.

According to the Utah Highway Safety Office, which pulled data from a NHTSA study (highwaysafety.utah.gov/05-bac-law) published some years after Utah’s lower BAC of 0.05% went into effect in 2019, the state experienced a 19.8% decrease in its fatal crash rate and an 18.3% decrease in its fatality rate.

Additionally, the study found that 22.1% of those who drank alcohol changed their behaviors once the law went into effect.

(Relatedly, NHTSA found none of the economic impact that had been predicted with the lowering of the BAC from 0.08% to 0.05%, as the American Beverage Institute and others feared in their ad campaigns.)

The point of a lower BAC limit has never been about reducing drinking. It has been about changing the culture, so that those who do drink do not drive, especially given all the available alternatives, which Current pointed out.

What needs to be understood, culturally, is that drinking – regardless of how much – does not go with driving. But we are saying otherwise with our current 0.08% BAC.

– Jonathan Bowers, Durango