By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
It’s the buzz at bars across the country: the National Transportation Safety Board wants to lower the legal blood alcohol limit. That means fewer drinks before it’s illegal to drive.
“Having less drinks would be better,” said bar patron Jim Phillipps. Why? “Because they’re driving. They’re getting out on the road.”
“If you lower the rate then people are going to manage their behavior differently and plan accordingly,” said bar patron Al Jasani.
Let’s count. Say it’s happy hour. A 160-pound man walks into a bar and the bartender lines up four shots. If he knocks back all four in an hour, he’s officially too drunk to drive. His blood alcohol level’s 0.08 percent, according to the CDC. But if he drinks just three shots, his blood alcohol’s 0.05 percent.
Dr. Soma Mandal explains it does make a difference.
“Blood level is at 0.05, you may have some difficulty steering, you may have some delayed reaction time. At 0.08 there can be some serious motor coordination issues. Noticing for example if somebody’s crossing the street, you may not be able to notice that right away,” the doctor said.
“By the time it reaches that level (0.08 percent), the risk of a fatal crash has more than doubled,” the NTSB says. “That is why states should lower BAC levels to 0.05 — or even lower.”
Duke’s Southern Table Manager Seydou Kabore agrees.
“If reducing the number of glasses that they’re drinking will permit them to come back the next day and have another glass of wine and keep on living, I’ll be more than happy to support that idea,” he said.
But not everyone’s on board, including — surprisingly — Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
“Currently right now MADD still supports a 0.08 BAC as the legal limit nationwide,” said MADD NJ Program Director Brandon English.
MADD’s more focused on sobriety checkpoints — already a familiar sight in New Jersey — and it’s pushing for a tougher ignition interlock law for convicted drunk drivers here, too.
“Right now if you’re a first time offender with 0.15 or above, you’ll get the ignition interlock. So we are pushing that everybody’s who convicted of DUI, driving under the influence at 0.08 would be issued this ignition interlock device. Twenty-five states, 26 states now actually, have it. And Gov. Christie conditional vetoed it last year,” English said.
The New Jersey Licensed Beverage Association says dropping the limit “…would not stop drunk driving…and only targets the social drinker who consumes one or two alcoholic beverages.”
AAA says New Jersey should focus more on the really bad drunks.
“We right now have a long way to go in making sure that we are taking the impaired drivers — those that are over the 0.08 level — off the roads and I think that there’s movement that still needs to happen here in New Jersey on that front, and that’s really where we’re focused today,” said AAA Northeast Director of Public Affairs Cathleen Lewis.
More than 100 countries already set their legal blood alcohol limits at 0.05. The U.S. is one of very few with a higher limit. But the National Transportation Safety Board can’t change the law. It can only make recommendations.