May 25, 2013 4 min read

We’ve all probably been in that uncomfortable position where we’ve been driving down the highway late at night and you see a vehicle in front of you drift into the berm, jolt back into the lane, and then drift over the center line.

As you contemplate how to quickly and safely pass the driver, you wonder: How many drinks did this guy have?

Though driving under the influence remains among the most commonplace of offenses – grab a handful of police reports at any agency, and you’re virtually certain to find some for DUI – it’s estimated that a whopping 4 million people drive in the United States while they are intoxicated, even though many escape detection. At the same time, the number of deaths attributed to drunken driving has declined over the last three decades, falling from 21,000 in 1982 to about 10,000 in 2012.

Automobile fatalities have declined in that period, in part due to safety upgrades in vehicles and on roads, but certainly one contributor to the fall in drunken driving deaths can be attributed to lowering the blood-alcohol limit for motorists from 0.10 to 0.08.

Now, the National Transportation Safety Board is recommending that the limit be lowered even further to 0.05. That would put it on a par with about 100 countries that use 0.05 as their legal limit. The board said the number of drunken driving deaths would probably drop even lower if the 0.05 threshold, almost half the current level, is adopted.

Although each state is allowed to set the parameters for what constitutes drunken driving, 0.08 became a universal standard in the 1980s and 1990s across the United States for blood-alcohol content after Congress made federal highway funds contingent on states adopting that level.

Of course, we abhor drunken driving and believe that people should behave with the utmost care when they get behind the wheel. You’re not only responsible for your own life and the lives of your passengers as you hurtle down the highway, but the lives of other drivers as well. However, we wonder if pushing the limit down to 0.05 would unfairly penalize individuals who sip a drink with dinner but are otherwise able to operate a vehicle safely.

Setting the blood-alcohol level at 0.05 would make a man who weighs 160 pounds legally drunk after two drinks. For a woman who weighs 120 pounds, it would require only one drink to reach that point. A report released earlier this month by the NTSB said that driving at even 0.01 can lead to some impairment, and that even driving with blood-alcohol content at 0.05 raises the risk of a fatal crash.

But organizations that you would think would cheer the stricter limit, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving or the Governors Highway Safety Administration, have not gotten behind the effort, nor has the American Automobile Association. The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association, has come out in opposition, arguing that it would “criminalize perfectly responsible behavior” and that it “does nothing to stop hard core drunken drivers from getting behind the wheel.”

Opponents of the change contend there are more constructive approaches to fighting drunken driving, such as the development of technology that would prevent drivers from starting cars when they are intoxicated, and more sobriety checkpoints. They also say additional efforts must be undertaken to combat texting while driving or the use of cellphones behind the wheel, which have led to their share of carnage on our highways. These are convincing arguments.

Making it so drunken-driving accidents result in fewer lives lost is absolutely a worthy goal, but lowering the blood-alcohol content to 0.05 percent could merely end up being a distraction from more substantial regulations that would make our roads safer.