Study: Drivers who drink but aren’t legally impaired cause thousands of deaths
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* Mark Barna

Drivers with blood-alcohol levels below legal limits cause 15% of all crash deaths that involve alcohol, a study in the March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds.

Researchers examined data from the National Highway Traffic Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System between 2000 and 2015, looking at demographic information on people who died in car crashes and other details. They also analyzed 1999-2014 data from the Alcohol Policy Scale, which tracks state alcohol policies.

Of the 612,000 car crash fatalities researchers analyzed, 223,000 involved one or more drivers who were impaired. Of those, nearly 34,000 crashes, or 15%, involved drivers with a blood-alcohol level below 0.08%, the legal limit in almost all U.S. states.

In recent years, experts have advised lowering the national blood-alcohol limit below 0.08%. In 2018, the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recommended lowering the national limit to 0.05%. Other studies suggest that blood-alcohol levels above 0.02% can cause driver impairment.

The new study showed that in crashes involving alcohol limits below 0.08%, the person or people who died were more likely to be someone other than the impaired driver. Data showed the decedent was often a driver of another vehicle involved in the crash with no alcohol in their system, or a woman between ages 21 and 55, the study said. The crashes also tended to involve more than two vehicles and occur on weekdays during the day.

Researchers said that more restrictive alcohol policies would reduce risk of car crashes involving drivers with blood-alcohol levels below 0.08%. While 49 states have a legal limit of 0.08%, Utah lowered its limit to 0.05% in 2018.

“Lower BAC-related MVC fatalities have been overlooked as a public health issue,” the researchers said. “This study suggests that strengthening alcohol policies could reduce alcohol-involved crash fatalities at all BAC levels.

For more information, read the [study](https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(20)30040-4/fulltext) online.

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