Do Our Drunk Driving Laws Need Reform?

For decades, the United States has had a consensus in terms of what constitutes drunk driving. You can legally operate a vehicle as long as your blood alcohol content does not exceed .08%. That has been true in all fifty states—until 2018, as the New York Times reports, when Utah lowered its limit to .05%. The results were dramatic: “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.”

Even though alcohol consumption is down in the US, drunk driving accidents are up, and markedly. During Covid, accident rates shot up 33%. Thirteen thousand people die because of drunk driving each year, and drunk driving accounts for a third of all traffic accidents. It is a real and persistent issue, and the US has trailed behind much of the world with their BAC laws. Take, for example, some of our peer countries:

.08%: Canada, Singapore, UK.
.05%: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain.
.04%: Finland, Iceland, Italy.
.03%: Japan.
.02%: Norway, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine.
0%: Czechia, Romania, Hungary.

The US has the most lenient laws, and we don’t have much company. Does that mean we should lower it, or have the other countries gone overboard?

Just looking at a list doesn’t tell you much. It’s useful to see how many drinks these different levels allow. The bodies of men and women are different, and the latter feel the effects sooner. So a 140-pound woman will blow .033 after one drink, and .066 after two, while a man of the same weight registers .026 and .054. Most men can consume two drinks in an hour and still get in a car and drive home, but women below 110 pounds will be in trouble after one.

You may have heard that we metabolize about a drink an hour, but that’s not true unless you have a large body. In fact, a body metabolizes alcohol at a rate of .015 - .018 an hour, or about half a drink for that 140-pound body. The 140-pound man drinking three drinks in two hours will be at .065, and a woman at .084 (above our current limit).

Impairment is a dicier topic because we each have different subjective experiences, but I know that if I have a couple pints of a beer in an hour, even a 4.8% lager, I feel it. According to our trusty BAC charts, as a 180 pounder, that means I’m only at .042. Am I “drunk?” Legally, not even close. (Of course, if those two pints are 6.5% IPAs, my blood alcohol content is quite a bit higher.) People aren’t especially good judges of their own impairment, however, and our judgment is impaired the more we drink. Research confirms that alcohol begins to affect our bodies sooner than we think, and that performance worsens substantially after .05%.

To return to the Utah case, officials made an additional discovery:

“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…. Rather than drinking less, the report stated, people were more likely to find an alternate way home.”

Given the obvious, measurable upsides Utah enjoyed by lowering the legal standard and the lack of effect on restaurants and bars, the argument to adjust the legal level to .05% is a strong one. It’s where most other countries are, it won’t criminalize having a beer or two and driving home after dinner at a restaurant, and seems to encourage people to drink and not drive.

When other states see the benefits of changing their laws, Utah will have more company sooner rather than later. And that will be, on balance, a good thing.