U.S. Should Lower DUI Blood-Alcohol Threshold To 0.05 Percent, Transportation Safety Board Says

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 13:01 in Health & Medicine

Hand 'Em Over City of Johns Creek, Georgia All states now have a 0.08 percent legal limit, but the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board says you're drunk at 0.05 percent blood-alcohol content. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is recommending a new, lower limit for what's considered driving drunk. The board, which has no regulatory authority, wants states to set the blood-alcohol limit at 0.05 percent for driving. All 50 states now have limits of 0.08 percent. After reviewing decades' worth of studies, the board concluded that people still have impaired attention, perception, reaction time and other functions important to driving at the lower blood-alcohol limit. The board also decided that the U.S. hasn't done enough yet to reduce drunk driving fatalities. About 173,000 people are injured every year in drunk-driver crashes and 10,000 people die, according a report the board published. About 30 percent of traffic deaths in the U.S. in...

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