Editorial: Numbers, results back lower BAC for Washington

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 6, 2026

By The Herald Editorial Board

Among the more perennial bills proposed in the state Legislature has been the effort to reduce the legal blood alcohol content limit for impaired driving to 0.05 percent from the current 0.08 BAC limit; most recently, the lower limit has been sought each year since 2022.

Leading the charge again this year is state Sen. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek, who represents the 44th Legislative District and announced last month in a commentary in The Herald that he would reintroduce the bill when the Legislature convenes for its 60-day session on Jan. 12.

Lovick, a former Washington State Patrol trooper and Snohomish County Sheriff, has long worked to advance traffic safety; he was among those who pushed for a strengthened seatbelt law in 2002, which since its adoption has helped boost the percentage of those who buckle up in Washington state to 95 percent on state highways.

“Our best public policies encourage safe and responsible behavior,” Lovick wrote. “One of the most tried and true policies is setting a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for driving. BAC laws have saved lives around the world for 90 years. The U.S. achieved significant reductions in traffic deaths when we moved from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent BAC for most adults and 0.02 percent for drivers under 21.”

Lovick now hopes that a further reduction of the BAC will again result in fewer impaired drivers as well as a reduction in deaths and injuries.

Last year, Lovick’s legislation, Senate Bill 5067, joined by fellow state Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, who chairs the Senate’s Transportation Committee, was given hearings and passed the chamber’s committees on law and justice and transportation but didn’t advance past the rules committee in order to get a floor vote and move on to the House. Instead, the bill was sent to the rules committee’s X file, allowing for future reconsideration.

Even as traffic fatalities — in Washington and nationwide — have peaked following a record 809 in the state in 2023, wrecks where the driver was impaired have continued to account for half of all crashes and a third of fatal wrecks, according to the most recent figures from the state Traffic Safety Commission’s dashboard.

The lower BAC limit is in effect in more than 150 countries across the globe, including 11 provinces in Canada and 10 states in Mexico, but only in one U.S. state: Utah.

Utah adopted its lower limit in 2017, and in its first full year in effect in 2019, noted lower numbers of crashes and fatalities, with 225 fatal wrecks and 248 fatalities, compared against 259 fatal crashes and 281 fatalities in 2016. Subsequent years haven’t shown a consistent decrease in Utah, with alcohol-related fatalities of only 27 in 2019, yet increases reaching 67 in 2022, then dropping to 47 in 2023, and eight in the first six months of 2024, according to a 2024 report by the Utah Department of Safety.

Perhaps skewing the statistics were the overall increases in traffic accidents, fatalities and injuries that Utah, Washington state and the nation saw between 2020 and 2023. Washington state suffered 538 traffic fatalities in 2019, then saw a significant rise each year until 2023’s peak of 809, before that number eased to 733 in 2024.

Still, both the Washington Traffic Safety Commission and NHTSA, favor the Utah law, pointing to its demonstrably positive impacts on highway safety, with reliable reductions in crash rates and alcohol involvement in crashes.

Additionally, NHTSA’s review of the Utah law found that concerns regarding negative economic impacts, in particular for restaurants and bars, were not realized. Alcohol sales, per capita consumption, tourism and tax revenues continued to increase in that state after passage of the law, NHTSA’s evaluation found.

Nor did arrests for impaired driving increase significantly, with the law’s desired effect instead seen in educating the public and simply discouraging drinking and driving. A little more than 22 percent of drinkers reported changing their behavior because of Utah’s law, the report said.

Part of Lovick’s legislation leans on that education, requiring a public interest campaign to inform state drivers of the change if adopted.

A better understanding of the impairment that most people experience at a blood alcohol level between 0.05 and 0.08 may not yet be well understood.

A state traffic safety commission fact sheet notes that impairment at 0.05 can include effects such as exaggerated behavior, loss of small-muscle control and ability to focus vision, impaired judgment, lowered alertness and lowered inhibitions, resulting in reduced coordination, reduced ability to track moving objects, difficulty steering and reduced response to traffic emergencies.

Looking at 2,877 traffic fatalities between 2017 and 2021, the state safety commission counted 326 drivers involved in fatal crashes where toxicology testing showed positive results for alcohol and no other substances; of those, 48 drivers — 15 percent — had BAC levels below 0.08. Among 410 drivers in fatal crashes who had consumed alcohol as well as cannabis or other substances, 78 — 19 percent — had BAC levels below 0.08.

If between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5 drivers who have consumed alcohol are then involved in fatal crashes, those are ratios that call for a rational response and a lower BAC.

While encouraging to see a marked decrease in traffic fatalities in the state since 2023, even an eventual return to the most recent low in 2014 of 462 traffic deaths is 462 too many.

Lowering the legal BAC to 0.05 — and making that limit and its meaning well known to all drivers — can get Washington back on a safer road.