France has a very high rate of alcohol consumption but it has a legal limit for blood alcohol of .05 g per 100 ml and about ½ the deaths per amount of alcohol consumed as the USA.Sweden had a lower legal limit of blood-alcohol for driving (.05 g per 100 ml) in addition the laws are more strictly enforced with stronger penalties for drunk driving. As a result there is one half of the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths in Sweden as there is in the United States as a percent of all traffic deaths. Since studies have shown that reducing the blood-alcohol from .10 to .08 g/ml has resulted in a 5-16% reduction in alcohol-related fatalities, it is logical to assume that if the legal limit for driving was .05 g/100 ml in the USA similar to what Sweden had , there would be a marked reduction in traffic related traffic fatalities in the USA.
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Government Policy Can Help Reduce the Number of Preventable Deaths
In Sweden between 1980 and 1989, the legal limit for BAC was 0.05 gm/100 ml and the prevalence of alcohol-related traffic fatalities was approximately half of that in the USA. Studies have shown that reducing the legal limit for the BAC in the USA from 0.10 to 0.08 gm/100 ml has resulted in a 5 – 16% reduction in the number of alcohol-related fatalities. If half of the alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the US were prevented (there were 17,602 in 2006), then 8,800 lives per year could be saved.(Constructed from data in Fell, J.C. and Voas, R.B. et al. J Safety Res, 37: 233, 2006; NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsAlcohol.aspx and Ostrom, M. et al. J Studies on Alcohol, 56: 506, 1995) ©2008 NBEP
