A legislative effort to lower Hawaii’s blood-­alcohol threshold for drunken driving was held up recently to better examine concerns over the proposed change.

Rep. David Tarnas, chair of the House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee, recently declined to give Senate Bill 160 a hearing after considering conflicting claims about the merits of the measure, which would reduce the limit to 0.05% from 0.08%.

“It’s a very important matter that we need to address, and I just want to address it responsibly,” he said. “I have to be very discerning.”

Tarnas (D, Hawi-Waimea-­Waikoloa) said his plan is to spend time before the start of next year’s legislative session in January to seek out more definitive evidence showing whether the change is warranted, and then possibly hold a hearing on SB 160 in the second part of the Legislature’s biennial term in 2024.

Earlier this year, SB 160 received a single public hearing, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted 5-0 to advance the measure to the full Senate where it passed on a 21-1 vote March 3 on its way to consideration in the House.

At the public hearing, 89 pages of written testimony was received, and some of it presented dueling conclusions from data.

About 45 organizations and individuals testified in support of the measure, including the National Transportation Safety Board, the state Department of Transportation, all four county prosecuting attorney offices and the Honolulu Police Department.

The Hawai‘i Alcohol Policy Alliance, another advocate, said a December statewide poll of 550 Hawaii voters conducted by market research firm SMS Hawaii suggests that 69% of voters support making the limit 0.05%.

Opposing SB 160 in testimony were five organizations: three local beer company or industry representatives, the state Office of the Public Defender and an entity advocating for California’s wine industry.

The NTSB, which since 2013 has recommended a nationwide reduction of alcohol impairment thresholds to 0.05% or lower, cited a February 2022 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study that it said demonstrates fewer fatal crashes result from a 0.05% threshold.

The study, which was cited by many SB 160 supporters and was expected to elevate the chances of changing Hawaii’s legal blood-alcohol limit for driving after unsuccessful attempts in past years, compared fatal crash rates adjusted for vehicle miles traveled nationwide and in Utah, which in 2019 became the only state to implement a 0.05% limit.

Utah’s fatal crash rate from 2016 to 2019 fell 18.3%, according to the study, which did not include data after 2019.

“Utah’s experience is a real success story, and one we hope to see repeated in Hawaii,” Thomas Chapman, an NTSB member, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Chapman said 368 people were killed in Hawaii from 2011 to 2020 in crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers and that research suggests adopting a 0.05% limit would reduce fatal alcohol-related crashes by 11% without increasing DUI arrests or hurting alcohol sales, tax revenue or tourism.

Sen. Karl Rhoads (D, Nuuanu-Downtown-Iwilei), chair of the Judiciary Committee, said during the hearing that it appears Utah’s lower threshold mainly led people to be more careful about how much they drink if they drive.

“It does have a deterrent effect,” Chapman replied.

The state Office of the Public Defender in written testimony called the federal report misleading and noted that annual traffic fatality rates in Utah in the decade prior to 2019 had gone up and down, and that fatalities in 2012 and 2013 were at a similar rate to 2019.

“The rates seen in Utah may be due to natural variation or some other unaccounted for factors,” the office said in its testimony.

The office additionally noted that nationwide fatality rates, while higher than in Utah, also declined between 2016 and 2019.

The Wine Institute, the California wine industry advocacy group, claimed in written testimony that alcohol-related traffic deaths in Utah jumped 52.6% in 2020, a year after the lower drunken driving standard took effect.

Tarnas said some of his colleagues in the House told him that the federal study assessing Utah’s change wasn’t a compelling reason to consider passing SB 160.

“It’s not a big data set,” he said. “It’s tough to draw conclusions from such a limited data set.”

According to other data from the Utah Department of Public Safety that wasn’t submitted as testimony on SB 160, the number of fatal alcohol-related vehicle crashes in Utah in 2019, when the lower threshold went into effect, dropped to 26 from 39 the year before but then rose to 45 in 2020 and 55 in 2021. Preliminary data subject to amendment for 2022 indicate 46 such crashes.

Jason Mettmann, communications manager for the department’s Highway Safety Office, described 2019 as an anomaly with better traffic safety that was followed by increased poor driver behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The last 3 years have not been ‘normal conditions,’ especially for tracking crash trends,” Mettmann said in an email.

Adjusting Utah’s alcohol-­related fatal crash rate for vehicle miles driven produced the same down-and-up trend from 2018 to 2022.

When counting all alcohol-related crashes in Utah whether or not they resulted in injury, there were more in 2019 — 938 crashes — compared with 933 in 2018, 895 in 2020, 918 in 2021 and a tentative count of 916 in 2022.

Tarnas said he intends to work with the chair of the House Transportation Committee, Rep. Chris Todd (D, Hilo-Keaau-Ainaloa), to collect more information related to impaired-driving crashes in the United States and in other countries where legal blood-alcohol limits for drivers are 0.05% or less.

Countries with the 0.05% limit include Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand, according to the World Health Organization.

Tarnas also said time is needed to possibly modify the legislation to address other concerns of opponents while satisfying proponents.

One concern is that courts will be swamped with criminal cases against what is currently accepted as responsible driving. One idea in this area is to give drivers with a blood-alcohol level between 0.05% and 0.08% a noncriminal citation with a fine. A bill to do this, SB 365, stalled in the Senate in February.

The state Department of Transportation said in written testimony that 4% of Hawaii drivers involved in fatal crashes from 2016 to 2020 had a blood-alcohol level between 0.05% and 0.08%.

The agency also said that the 0.05% level is not typically reached with a couple of beers after work or a glass of wine or two at dinner, and that it takes at least four drinks for an average 170­-­pound male, or three drinks for a 137-pound female, to exceed 0.05% in two hours on an empty stomach.

In addition to gender, weight and food consumption, factors affecting blood-alcohol levels include age and metabolism.

Rick Collins, director of the Hawai‘i Alcohol Policy Alliance, said in an interview that he was disappointed with the fate of SB 160 this year but is hopeful that broader data convinces Tarnas and other House leaders to hear SB 160 in 2024 and help the bill become law.

The organization, a project of the Hawai‘i Public Health Institute, already has been sharing more data with Tarnas, including studies from some of the roughly 100 countries that have blood-alcohol limits of 0.05%, 0.03%, 0.02% and 0.00%.

“The majority of countries in the world have a 0.05 limit or lower,” Collins said. “It’s a reasonable limit to set.”

OVER THE LIMIT

>> Four percent of Hawaii drivers involved in fatal crashes from 2016 to 2020 had a blood-alcohol level between 0.05% and 0.08%.

>> The amount of alcohol it takes to reach the 0.05% level in two hours on an empty stomach is at least four drinks for an average 170-pound male and three drinks for an average 137-pound female.

Source: State Department of Transportation