SALT LAKE CITY — A proposed law that would reduce Utah's legal blood-alcohol level for driving to .05 percent is intended to help public safety by deterring people from drinking and driving.
Lawmakers and others say it will save lives and keep social drinkers off the road.
Data collected in 2015 by the state show that most people involved in fatal drunken driving crashes are measuring well above the .08 percent limit, while seven drivers had blood-alcohol levels between .01 and .07 percent.
Alcohol-related fatalities. | Heather Tuttle
The sponsor of HB155, Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, said last week that lowering the legal blood-alcohol level to .05 percent "creates a general deterrent effect. So that means when people go out to drink, they are less likely to get in their cars and drive."
That means there will be "fewer people drinking and driving on our roads. Therefore, we will have fewer crashes, we'll have fewer injuries and fewer deaths," Thurston said, predicting the lower limit could save between 10 and 20 lives each year in Utah.
Utah Department of Public Safety's Highway Safety Office statistics from 2015 show that 259 drivers involved in any type of fatal crash were tested for alcohol. Of those, 31 were over the legal blood-alcohol limit, with 23 of those recording levels at least twice the legal limit of .08 percent. The overwhelming majority — 221 — had no traceable amounts of alcohol in their systems.
Seven drivers had a blood-alcohol content levels at least three times the legal limit, and three drivers had levels at least four times the legal limit.
Similarly, statistics collected by the Utah Highway Safety Office show that of the 196 drivers involved in fatal crashes during 2014, four had blood-alcohol levels between .01 and .07 percent, while 37 were over the .08 limit.
According to statistics used by the National Transportation Safety Board, drivers with a .05 to .08 blood-alcohol level represent "just 8 percent of all drivers involved in fatal accidents."
Among some of the recent DUI crashes the Deseret News has reported:
• Chelsea Fuller, 30, was sentenced to the Utah State Prison in January for driving drunk and crashing, killing an unbuckled infant sitting on her mother's lap inside the car. Fuller's blood-alcohol content at the time of the crash was .233 percent. Fuller also pleaded guilty to DUI in October 2012 and no contest to impaired driving in January 2012, according to Utah court records.
• Dyllon Marc Mercado, 22, was charged in September in 5th District Court with two counts of automobile homicide and one count of DUI for a crash near Toquerville that killed two men. His blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.118 percent, according to charging documents.
• In August, Sally H. Sturtevant, 62, was arrested and later charged with automobile homicide for hitting motorcyclist Rodney Russell, 43, of Sandy. Sturtevant told police she was headed to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at the time of the crash. Her blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.097 percent.
• Peter Vance Wilcox, 38, pleaded guilty a year ago to automobile homicide for hitting and killing a cyclist while drunk in 2014. Wilcox hit Mitchell Bennett, 50, an avid cyclist and bike builder, while driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.228 percent.
• In March 2016, Stuart Riley Miller, 30, of Kamas, allegedly got on I-80 at Kimball Junction while driving with blood-alcohol level of 0.279 percent. Police say he drove the wrong way going 90 mph, crashed head-on into a Saturn Vue, killing Amanda Kae Streit, 39, of Park City. Miller is charged with automobile homicide.
• Just last week, Bryan James Debolt, 46, of Murray, was charged in 3rd District Court with DUI and driving on a suspended license. He had a blood-alcohol level of 0.159 percent, according to charging documents. Debolt has already been convicted of DUI five times, including two in the past 10 years, the charges state.
'Red herring'
The website defensivedriving.com — a Texas-based company that teaches defensive driving skills — says that in 2013, "more than 100 countries have dropped their legal BAC limit to .05 percent with significant changes," particularly in Australia, where "the change led to provinces reporting a 5 to 18 percent drop in traffic fatalities."
The website also contends that the argument that a .05 legal limit will not have much of an impact because those committing drunken driving crashes have blood-alcohol content levels that register well past that limit is a "red herring."
"When you consider the difference between a person’s peripheral vision at .05 and .08, the driver is 100 percent more likely to be involved in an accident, according to (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). So lowering the BAC to .05 will definitely save lives," the website states.
Sutherland Institute also supports lowering the limit to .05 percent. In an statement submitted to the Deseret News on Monday, the conservative public policy think tank notes that Utah was the first state in the nation to drop the blood-alcohol limit from .10 to .08 in 1983 and tourism has thrived.
Furthermore, the Salt Lake City-based group says lowering the limit to .05 percent does not single out responsible drinkers, saying responsible drinkers don't drive impaired.
As to whether the law will affect those who choose to drive with levels of 0.15 percent or higher, the group says past efforts to lower the level have shown to have a positive impact on safety.
"Lowering the BAC limit sends the same message to heavy drinkers as it does to light drinkers: Don’t drink and drive," Sutherland Institute said in its statement.
"The public and Utah policymakers deserve better than myths and alternative facts as they consider the merits of Utah's .05 BAC law."
Utah arrest rates
The number of people killed in alcohol-related crashes reached a 10-year high in 2014 when 45 people were killed in Utah, nearly double the 23 killed in 2013, according to Highway Safety Office statistics. In 2015, the 31 fatal crashes attributed to drunken driving resulted in 37 deaths.
Still, "Utah had the lowest percent of deaths due to drunk drivers for every year from 1995-2010, except 2004 and 2008," according to the Highway Safety Office.
There were 10,755 DUI-related arrests in Utah during fiscal year 2016 — 47 fewer than in fiscal year 2015, according to the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice's annual DUI report to the Legislature.
"Almost 82 percent of the arrests were for per se violations, where the driver had a .08 or greater blood/breath alcohol concentration, or was impaired by alcohol or drugs, or a combination of the two to the extent it was unsafe to operate a vehicle," according to the report.
"The average blood-alcohol content for arrestees was nearly .15, and the highest was .40 — five times the legal limit," the report states.
In 2012, a report from the Highway Safety Office found "over half (56 percent) of the drunk drivers in fatal crashes had blood-alcohol levels at or above twice the legal limit. One-fifth (20 percent) had BAC levels three times above the legal limit."
The report also found that "while Utah’s population has continued to grow, the arrest rate has declined steadily, with a nearly 38 percent decrease since fiscal year 2009."
Under current law, a person convicted of a DUI has restrictions put on their driver's license that implements penalties for any measurable amount of alcohol found in their system if they are pulled over again.
According to state statistics, "nearly 71 percent of arrests were for a first offense, almost 19 percent were for a second offense, almost 7 percent were for a third offense, and about 3 percent were for a fourth or subsequent offense."
In contrast, commercial vehicle drivers can get a DUI charge for driving with a blood-alcohol content of .04 percent.
"The fewest arrests were of commercial drivers exceeding the .04 limit, which represented less than 1 percent of the total," the report states.
Signs of impairment
Last week, more than 100 people rallied at the state Capitol, urging Gov. Gary Herbert to veto the bill that would give Utah the lowest DUI level in the country. Many of those opposed to the bill are from the hospitality industry who fear the law would be seen as another odd Utah liquor law that would deter tourism.
Some fear that a driver who has a single beer at the bar after work, or after a day of skiing, will be arrested for drunken driving.
But the Utah Highway Patrol says troopers will only stop drivers who are exhibiting signs of being drunk — such as being unable to stay in a lane — as troopers have always done. Once a driver is pulled over, a trooper looks for additional signs of impairment such as slurred or slow speech and bloodshot eyes. If a trooper still suspects impairment, the trooper will then make the driver undergo a series of tests — such as walking a straight line — before considering a breathalyzer.
"We do not expect a significant change for law enforcement with the implementation of a .05 blood-alcohol content limit," the UHP said in a prepared statement earlier this month after HB155 passed. "Law enforcement officers in Utah, consistent with national standard, are trained to make arrests for DUI based on impairment and the inability to safely operate a motor vehicle."
The biggest question for most drinkers has been: How many drinks will it take now to be considered legally drunk?
According to the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice's report, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that to reach a blood-alcohol of .15 percent, a 160-pound man would need to consume about seven beers within one hour. To reach .08 percent, that same man would have to drink four beers in one hour.
Three beers in one hour would give a 160-pound man a blood-alcohol level of .05 percent, according to the CDC. At that level, the CDC says a driver will have "reduced coordination and ability to track moving objects" and "difficulty steering."
At two beers, the CDC said that same man would have a .02 percent level and experience a "loss of judgment" and have trouble doing two tasks at the same time.
In 2016, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that the .05 percent limit become the nationwide standard. As a story by CNN pointed out, the NTSB made the same proposal for three years in a row, but each time it generated little traction. The CNN report also noted that Mothers Against Drunk Driving hasn't taken an official position on the .05 percent issue.
Locally, Utah Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter president Art Brown told KSTU in December that his organization would prefer to focus on interlock devices in vehicles rather than lowering the DUI limit to .05 percent.
The CDC says interlock devices lower the re-arrest rate of DUI drivers by two-thirds, according to a USA Today editorial.
The most recent Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice report presented to the Utah Legislature also presented disturbing statistics for drivers who are impaired by either drugs or alcohol or both.
"The number of DUI/drug-related crashes increased significantly, from 320 in 2014 to 701 in 2015 — a 119 percent increase. In addition, the number of fatalities that were DUI/drug-related increased 76 percent from 38 in 2014 to 67 in 2015, the highest number in the past nine years, and representing nearly a quarter of all crash fatalities in Utah in 2015," according to the report.
"The most common types of drugs found in fatal drug-related crashes in 2015 were THC/marijuana, methamphetamine and hydrocodone."