A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that if we want to further curb drunk driving, we should lower the blood alcohol limit from .08 to 0.05 percent blood alcohol concentration (BAC). More broadly, the report also recommends significantly increasing alcohol taxes and cracking down on sales to minors and over-served adults. It also suggests we need more effective treatment for offenders, including ignition locks that keep them from driving without proving they’re sober. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration commissioned the report.The recommendations come in response to what an NASEM committee sees as diminished attention to the problem of drunk driving. “Among developed nations, the US has the highest proportion of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities,” Kit Delgado, assistant professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a committee member, wrote in an editorial on STAT News. “This is unacceptable.”Delgado notes that progress made in the 80’s in reducing drunk-driving fatalities began to stall in 2009. In 2015, alcohol-related deaths started ticking upward. In 2016, alcohol-impaired driving killed 10,497 people in the US—or 29 people a day. Almost 40 percent of those deaths are people other than the intoxicated driver. These entirely preventable crashes cost $121 billion in 2010.The committee’s report is called “Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities: A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem.” As the title suggests, its goal is not simply to reduce drunk-driving fatalities—it’s to eliminate them entirely.To that end, the panel proposed wide-ranging changes aimed at affecting what committee chair Steven Teutsch called a “network of events and circumstances.” The recommendations can be broken into three main categories: reducing drinking to impairment, reducing driving while impaired, and post-arrest and post-crash interventions that will lower the rates of repeat offenders. In other words, it should be harder for people to get drunk, they shouldn’t be behind the wheel if and when they do, and, once caught, they should never do it again.
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You might wonder how the government can reduce excessive drinking. One answer, according to the panel, is alcohol taxes. Delgado says there’s strong evidence that higher alcohol taxes reduce drunk-driving crashes and fatalities. But alcohol taxes at both the state and federal levels have actually declined in inflation-adjusted terms and the tax bill passed last month would lower federal alcohol taxes by 16 percent.If we want to change the trajectory on drunk-driving deaths, those taxes need to be raised. “Similar to what has been done with tobacco taxes,” he writes, “federal and state governments should raise alcohol taxes enough to have a meaningful impact on price to reduce alcohol-related crash fatalities.” (Not surprisingly, makers of alcoholic beverages are not on board with that idea. The Distilled Spirits Council, which represents the industry, opposed tax hikes, saying in a statement that they "will have little or no impact on traffic safety.")Higher alcohol taxes alone won’t deter people from getting drunk, and the panel also suggests restricting the days and hours of alcohol sales, dedicating more resources to stop sales to people under 21 and people who are already intoxicated, and restrict alcohol advertising and fund counter-marketing campaigns.Other recommendations are designed to keep intoxicated people from getting behind the wheel. That includes lowering the BAC limit at the federal level—the authors say a person’s ability to operate a car or motorcycle starts deteriorating at 0.05 percent and Austria, Denmark, and Japan already use 0.05 percent as their limits—as well as increasing the frequency of well-publicized sobriety checkpoints. The Distilled Spirits Council also opposes lowering the BAC limit, favoring “strict enforcement” of the current level. “Reducing the BAC limit to 0.05,” it says in a statement, “will do nothing to deter the behavior of repeat and high BAC drivers who represent the vast majority of drunk driving fatalities on the nation’s roads.”Further over the horizon, it also means improving technology that can keep cars from operating if they detect a driver’s BAC is too high. It also includes more indirect improvements, like beefing up alternatives to driving, such as public transportation—especially in rural and suburban areas were the car is the default mode of transport.Finally, the panel suggests we need better means to deal with repeat offenders. Delgado points to DWI courts, which are designed not just to punish, but to change behavior through careful, comprehensive monitoring and substance misuse treatment. The committee recommends such courts be used nationwide. It also suggests all states require ignition interlocks for everyone convicted of driving under the influence, even if it’s a first offense. That would mean more people having to blow into a breathalyzer before they can turn on their car, which would mean safer roads.Overall, the committee’s recommendations are wide-ranging—they’re an attempt to address every facet of the problem of drunk driving. “With the systematic implementation of the evidence-based interventions highlighted in the report,” Degado writes, “we can save more lives and reduce health care costs.”Read This Next: We're Drinking More Than Twice What Experts Consider a Binge
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You might wonder how the government can reduce excessive drinking. One answer, according to the panel, is alcohol taxes. Delgado says there’s strong evidence that higher alcohol taxes reduce drunk-driving crashes and fatalities. But alcohol taxes at both the state and federal levels have actually declined in inflation-adjusted terms and the tax bill passed last month would lower federal alcohol taxes by 16 percent.If we want to change the trajectory on drunk-driving deaths, those taxes need to be raised. “Similar to what has been done with tobacco taxes,” he writes, “federal and state governments should raise alcohol taxes enough to have a meaningful impact on price to reduce alcohol-related crash fatalities.” (Not surprisingly, makers of alcoholic beverages are not on board with that idea. The Distilled Spirits Council, which represents the industry, opposed tax hikes, saying in a statement that they "will have little or no impact on traffic safety.")Higher alcohol taxes alone won’t deter people from getting drunk, and the panel also suggests restricting the days and hours of alcohol sales, dedicating more resources to stop sales to people under 21 and people who are already intoxicated, and restrict alcohol advertising and fund counter-marketing campaigns.Other recommendations are designed to keep intoxicated people from getting behind the wheel. That includes lowering the BAC limit at the federal level—the authors say a person’s ability to operate a car or motorcycle starts deteriorating at 0.05 percent and Austria, Denmark, and Japan already use 0.05 percent as their limits—as well as increasing the frequency of well-publicized sobriety checkpoints. The Distilled Spirits Council also opposes lowering the BAC limit, favoring “strict enforcement” of the current level. “Reducing the BAC limit to 0.05,” it says in a statement, “will do nothing to deter the behavior of repeat and high BAC drivers who represent the vast majority of drunk driving fatalities on the nation’s roads.”Further over the horizon, it also means improving technology that can keep cars from operating if they detect a driver’s BAC is too high. It also includes more indirect improvements, like beefing up alternatives to driving, such as public transportation—especially in rural and suburban areas were the car is the default mode of transport.Finally, the panel suggests we need better means to deal with repeat offenders. Delgado points to DWI courts, which are designed not just to punish, but to change behavior through careful, comprehensive monitoring and substance misuse treatment. The committee recommends such courts be used nationwide. It also suggests all states require ignition interlocks for everyone convicted of driving under the influence, even if it’s a first offense. That would mean more people having to blow into a breathalyzer before they can turn on their car, which would mean safer roads.Overall, the committee’s recommendations are wide-ranging—they’re an attempt to address every facet of the problem of drunk driving. “With the systematic implementation of the evidence-based interventions highlighted in the report,” Degado writes, “we can save more lives and reduce health care costs.”Read This Next: We're Drinking More Than Twice What Experts Consider a Binge