Is it time to lower the DUI threshold?

Uncle Sam wants states to crack down

Georgia police operate a road check on March 1 as part of a 90-day state crackdown on DUI and safety violations called Operation Thunder.
(Image credit: Todd Bennett/Staff/ZUMA Press/Corbis)

The federal government's National Transportation Safety Board recommended Tuesday that states lower the threshold for drunk driving charges from 0.08 percent blood alcohol content to 0.05 percent.

(To get a sense of how many drinks this represents, play around with the University of Oklahoma's blood alcohol content calculator.)

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.