United States moving towards drink driving limit of 0.05

MEDIA RELEASE – 4/11/13

United States moving towards drink driving limit of 0.05

In 2010 the NZ Ministry of Transport recommended the lowering of the legal blood alcohol limit for adult drivers from 0.08 to 0.05 based on a large international research literature, and said “Lowering the adult drink-drive limit would be the strongest initiative in the area of Safe Road Use” in New Zealand’s Road Safety Strategy 2010-2020.

This recommendation was ignored by the National-led government which instead commissioned “more research” focussing on traffic crashes involving drivers with a blood alcohol level between 0.05 and 0.08.

However, the issue has now been reignited by a member’s bill from Iain Lees-Galloway of the Labour Party which aims to achieve this change.

This week the top international alcohol research journal “Addiction” has published an article by two leading U.S. researchers in the field of alcohol-related traffic injury in which they review the international research that is directly relevant to this question.

The motivation for the article is that in the U.S.A. (one of the few other countries that still has a 0.08 limit) the National Transportation Safety Board has recommended that all states establish a BAC limit of 0.05 or lower.

Professor Jennie Connor, a medical spokesperson for Alcohol Action NZ, says she “expects that this move in the U.S. would dispel any remaining doubts that New Zealanders had about the benefits of lowering the limit”

“The United States is renowned for the lengths it will go to protect the rights and preferences of individuals. In this case there is considerable benefit to individuals, but also to communities and the nation as a whole.”

The authors of the report, James Fell and Robert Voas, conclude from reviewing the whole body of relevant research that virtually all drivers are impaired in some driving performance measures at 0.05, including “experienced drinkers” who would typically reach blood levels three times that high. The risk of being in a crash rises with any alcohol at all but accelerates rapidly above 0.05.

“At least 91 countries around the world have adopted a 0.05 or lower BAC limit, and many of these changes have been studied” says Professor Connor. “Numbers of fatal and serious injury crashes consistently fall, and problems for the police and court systems do not eventuate”.

Professor Doug Sellman adds “One of the most powerful messages that comes from the research is that lowering the limit reduces crashes involving drivers at all levels of drunkenness including, importantly, those with very high levels.”

“The law change does not work by simply changing the behaviour of drivers who currently drive between 0.05 and 0.08, but of the whole population.”

“New Zealand is going to be a safer, better country with a lowered drink driving limit for adults”

Alcohol Action NZ
www.alcoholaction.co.nz

Fell JC, Voas RB. The effectiveness of a 0.05 blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for driving in the United States. Addiction: Article first published online: 25 OCT 2013 | DOI: 10.1111/add.12365

ENDS

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