NTSB Says Lower Limit Will Reduce Deaths on Highways

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wants to do more to reduce traffic deaths attributed to drunk driving. Each year about 10,000 people die in alcohol related traffic deaths.

The current limit is .08. The NTSB proposes reducing the limit to .05. Tougher drunk-driving threshold proposed to reduce traffic deaths.

The board also recommended states expand laws allowing police to immediately take licenses from drivers who were over the breath alcohol limits.jack-10018936

The board is also advocating for laws requiring all first-time offenders to have ignition locking devices that prevent cars from starting until breath samples are analyzed. Indeed, we already have such laws in our State.

In the early 1980s, when groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) brought attention to drunk driving, the limit in many states was as high as 0.15. But over the next 20 plus years, MADD and other groups pushed states to adopt the 0.08 BAC standard. The federal government virtually ensured compliance with this standard by threatening to withhold highway dollars to states that did not change their laws to make the limit .08.

The number of alcohol-related highway fatalities, meanwhile, dropped from 20,000 in 1980 to 9,878 in 2011, the NTSB said.