Once a moral imperative takes hold, crowd sentiment can rise like an incoming tide, carrying along supporters and drowning out contrary voices.
So as a wave of support builds for a proposal to further reduce Washington’s legal limit for intoxication, we suggest everyone take a deep breath and plant their feet firmly against this misguided idea.
Senate Bill 5002, currently under consideration in Olympia, would lower the blood alcohol concentration — the point at which drivers are considered legally drunk — from 0.08% to 0.05%. If approved and signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee, who has already signaled he supports the idea, Washington would join Utah in having the strictest DUI limit in the United States.
Yes, just Utah. And us.
Inslee and Washington lawmakers who favor lowering our BAC limit point to statistics showing DUI arrest rates and DUI-related fatalities fell in Utah in the first year after the state lowered its legal limit from 0.08% to 0.05% in 2018.
But not many of them seem to be pointing to what those statistics looked like beyond that first year. Maybe they should.
Because while Utah’s DUI-related fatalities dropped from 48 in 2018 to 19 in 2019 — the first year of the stricter new law — they sprang back up to 46 in 2020. And the 48 fatalities recorded in 2018 were considerably higher than what Utah had seen in the previous decade.
We don’t see a straight line connecting tougher BAC rules to fewer DUI-related fatalities.
The Beehive State’s DUI arrest rates don’t do much to further the case for lowering the BAC, either.
Utah’s Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice prepares an annual report for the Legislature that details DUI arrests and motor vehicle accidents involving drugs or alcohol. Here’s a key line from the 2020 report:
“DUI-related fatalities involving both alcohol and drugs were down considerably in 2019, but bounced back in 2020 to levels similar to 2018. The 67 alcohol-related fatalities in 2020 were more than double (+142%) the 19 fatalities in 2019.”
And there’s this:
“In FY 2019, law enforcement officers made 9,995 arrests, 388 fewer (-4%) than in FY 2018. While Utah’s population has continued to grow, the arrest rate for DUI-related offenses has declined steadily, with a nearly 44% decrease over the past ten years (associated with 5,290 fewer arrests than FY 2010).”
Go figure.
Now Utah’s a fine state — the Wasatch Range is breathtaking, the wild and scenic Green River should be on everybody’s bucket list and the Mormon Tabernacle is ... well, a pretty big church.
But it’s not exactly our twin sister politically or culturally.
Nearly two-thirds of the people who live there identify as Mormon — a faith that preaches abstaining from alcohol or “hot drinks,” including coffee and tea. Fewer than 4% of Washington’s residents are Mormon.
It stands to reason that Utah’s battle against impaired driving might not be quite the same as Washington’s.
If tightening BAC limits isn’t making a clear-cut difference in a state where much of the population already practices alcohol abstinence, why would it work here?
And why bring it up now — just as visitors are finally starting to venture back to the Yakima Valley’s wineries after the pandemic? How many tourists might decide against sampling local wines out of fear that an innocent visit to a tasting room could turn into a traumatic stay in the Yakima County jail?
With little reason to believe tighter rules would save any lives, why would the state put an industry that contributes more than $277 million in state and local taxes at risk?
As we said at the top, once a proposal takes on moral tones, people tend to stop listening to contrary points of view.
Moral codes aside, in this case we’re all agreed that reducing DUI fatalities is the prime concern. Focusing on the BAC just doesn’t seem like the solution, though. Let’s come up with a more definitive way of determining whether drivers should be behind the wheel to begin with — don’t simply rely on an arbitrary number.
And if we’re serious about saving lives, let’s follow the National Transportation Safety Board’s 2022 recommendation to equip all cars with BAC monitoring systems that can lock the ignition if a driver is impaired. Or let’s think about tougher penalties as a deterrent.
At any rate, imposing an ill-considered and clearly flawed approach like SB 5002 is like turning into the wrong lane without even looking.
Yakima Herald-Republic editorials reflect the collective opinion of the newspaper’s local editorial board.
