Utah lowers DUI BAC limit to 0.05; NHTSA says fatal crashes there drop 20%

As National Public Radio reports, in 1983. Utah became the first state to lower its blood alcohol content (BAC) threshold for driving under the influence (DUI) from 0.10 to 0.08. The U.S. Congress didn't mandate a 0.08 BAC until 17 years later, after all states had already done so thanks to lobbying by groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which had been formed in 1980. Utah has again led the way in lowering the BAC threshold, dropping the official limit for a DUI classification to 0.05 on December 30, 2018, the lowest of all 50 states. A New York Times piece out today looks at the National Highway Transport Safety Administration's 2022 review of the effects of Utah's change, called, "Evaluation of Utah’s .05 BAC Per Se Law." According to the paper, fatal crashes fell 19.8% when comparing the full-year 2016 data to the full-year data for 2019. The NHTSA used 2016 because Utah's governor signed the measure into law in 2017, although the law didn't take effect for another 21 months.

A graph in the document shows fatal crashes falling in Utah starting in 2015, falling nationwide starting in 2016. Comparing the same years, 2016 vs 2019, the number of fatal crashes fell nationwide by 5.6%.