U.S. safety board recommends states lower blood alcohol limits

An independent federal agency in the United States has issued recommendations for the country to help eliminate impaired driving, including reducing state blood alcohol content levels.

On Tuesday, all five members of the National Transportation Safety Board unanimously voted on several recommendations, including reducing state BAC limits from 0.08 to 0.05 or lower.

“The research clearly shows that drivers with a BAC above 0.05 are impaired and at a significantly greater risk of being involved in a crash where someone is killed or injured,” NTSB chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman noted in a statement from the board.

Under the Criminal Code of Canada, the BAC limit is 0.08. However, most provinces have lower limits (usually 0.05) set out in their highway traffic acts (allowing police officers to suspend licences), with the exception of Quebec, where the limit is 0.08. The provincial laws on BAC limits are also typically lower (or zero tolerance) for new drivers, taxi drivers and drivers of heavy trucks or other large commercial vehicles. 

The NTSB recommendations are included in a report, based on a yearlong examination of the impaired driving problem.

Other recommendations for states from that report include:

• Increase use of high-visibility enforcement
• Develop and deploy in-vehicle detection technology
• Require ignition interlocks for all offenders
• Improve use of administrative license actions
• Target and address repeat offenders
• Reinforce use and effectiveness of DWI courts

“Most Americans think that we’ve solved the problem of impaired driving, but in fact, it’s still a national epidemic,” Hersman noted. “On average, every hour one person is killed and 20 more are injured.”

Each year in the U.S. about 10,000 people are killed in crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers and more than 173,000 are injured, with 27,000 suffer incapacitating injuries, according to the NTSB.

“Since the mid-1990s, even as total highway fatalities have fallen, the proportion of deaths from accidents involving an alcohol-impaired driver has remained constant at around 30%,” the board notes. “In the last 30 years, nearly 440,000 people have died in alcohol related crashes.”

The board’s full report on impaired driving issues and the rationale for its recommendations is available on its website.