Hawaii’s Legislature should make a bold move to protect its citizens from those who choose to drink and drive by lowering the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit from 0.08 to 0.05.

Since 2013, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recommended that all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico establish a per se BAC limit of .05 or lower.

In 2018, Utah became the first state to do so and subsequently saw reductions in both its fatal crash and fatality rates relative to the rest of the United States.

This legislative session, the Legislature is considering bills that would make it the second state to embrace a change that will save lives and cut the number of senseless and completely avoidable crashes.

From 2011 to 2020, alcohol-impaired driving crashes killed 368 people on Hawaii’s roads. Many hundreds more were injured, some grievously.

Impaired driving has been with us since the automobile arrived on the scene more than 100 years ago. Many approaches to reduce alcohol-impaired crashes have been tried, and some have made a significant difference — interlock devices that prevent convicted offenders from driving under the influence, DWI courts, education, and advocacy efforts — but the number of crashes and deaths remains stubbornly high.

For almost 25 years, the proportion of highway deaths nationwide involving an alcohol-impaired driver has remained virtually unchanged, at nearly one-third. More needs to be done. And the evidence shows that lowering the legal BAC per se limit to 0.05 will reduce traffic fatalities.

Other countries have also struggled with this safety issue, and many have embraced a 0.05 BAC. The logic goes like this: If the more alcohol a person consumes increases the risk of a crash, then lower the amount of alcohol a person can consume and still legally drive. Currently, more than 100 countries worldwide have BAC limits set at .05 or lower, and the benefits of these sensible safety-minded limits are well documented. When the limits go down, crashes drop, too, just as we have seen in Utah.

Research suggests that a 0.05 BAC law would reduce fatal alcohol-related crashes by an estimated 11%. Further, the 0.05 BAC law works as a general deterrence, helping to modify the behavior of all drivers by encouraging them to separate drinking from driving. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s evaluation of Utah’s 0.05 BAC law showed that more than 1 in 5 drinkers reported that they made changes — such as making sure alternative transportation was available when drinking away from home — after the Utah lower BAC law went into effect. Utah saw reductions in crash rates and alcohol involvement in crashes in 2019 while there was no negative impact on alcohol sales, tourism, tax revenues and DUI arrests. It’s a real success story, one we hope to see repeated in Hawaii.

Because we know it works, we at the National Transportation Safety Board strongly support legislation that will lower the legal BAC per se limit to 0.05. Addressing impaired driving on America’s roads requires bold leadership, and we applaud Hawaii lawmakers for considering this key step.

Tom Chapman is a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.