In late 2018, Utah lowered its drunk-driving restrict from a B.A.C. (blood-alcohol content material) of .08 to .05.
A yr after the regulation was applied, the Nationwide Highmeans Site visitors Security Administration discovered that deadly automobile crashes within the state had dropped by nearly 20 percent.
“Imagine me, I by no means thought we’d see a major impact in Utah,” stated James Fell, a principal analysis scientist who research site visitors security on the impartial analysis group NORC, on the College of Chicago. The state had one of many lowest impaired driving charges in the US to start with, he added.
Utah is presently the one state within the nation with a .05 drunk-driving restrict; in every single place else, the restrict stays .08. However internationally, Utah is far from alone. Australia, France, Thailand and about 50 different nations have a B.A.C. restrict of .05, and in additional than 30 different nations, the restrict is even decrease.
With U.S. drunk-driving deaths rising lately (about 33 percent between 2019 and 2022, in response to the newest knowledge), a number of different states — together with New York, Washington, Hawaii and Connecticut — at the moment are contemplating comparable laws to decrease the authorized driving restrict.
“We’re dropping, on the highways as of late, greater than 13,000 individuals a yr,” stated Thomas Chapman, a member of the Nationwide Transportation Security Board. “I imply, it’s simply an astonishing quantity.” In 2022, drunk-driving accidents accounted for 32 % of all site visitors fatalities.
