It could soon be illegal to drive if you have more than a single drink
States should reduce the legal blood alcohol limit for driving from 0.08 percent to 0.05 percent or lower, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in its "Most Wanted List" of policy changes released this week.
For smaller women whose weight is close to 100 pounds, that would make it illegal to drive after consuming anything beyond one drink. An average-weight man tipping the scales at 180 pounds could have just two drinks, down from the current approximate limit of four.
The NTSB made the same recommendation in 2013 but did not successfully persuade states to abandon the 0.08 baseline. Only one in 100 alcohol-related traffic deaths are caused by people whose BAC level is between 0.05 and 0.08, while 70 percent are linked to already-illegal BAC levels of 0.15 percent or higher (that's nine or more drinks for the 180-pound man).
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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