× Expand David Michael Miller

As the parent of a young child, my New Year’s Eves are reliably mellow. If I go anywhere — and that’s a big “if” — I get home well before midnight.

My New Year’s mornings, in contrast, are reliably infuriating. Every Jan. 1, I wake to news of death and mayhem on area roads. There’s no “if” about it.

This year, the saddest news was the death of Lake Mills Fire Captain Chris Truman, who was hit by a passing car as he voluntarily helped at the scene of a minor crash on the Beltline. Surprise, surprise, the police say the passing driver had been drinking.

In an interview on Jan. 2, Gov.-elect Tony Evers lamented Captain Truman’s death, and insisted that “we need to send a message to the people of Wisconsin.” He said he would consider supporting a Republican-authored measure that would criminalize first-offense drunk driving, bringing Wisconsin in line with every other state in the union.

As long as possession of one little joint is a crime under state law, drunkenly piloting a several-ton missile through our public thoroughfares probably should be, too. Amazingly, the legislation looks doomed, so first-timers will continue to be let off with a traffic ticket. What an embarrassment.

Contrast Wisconsin with a state that takes drunk driving seriously. In 1983, Utah became the first state to lower its legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit from .1 percent to .08 percent. (Every state eventually followed suit.) Then, late last year, it became the first to drop from .08 to .05.

There are plenty of things Wisconsin could do to reduce alcohol-related traffic fatalities. But lowering the BAC limit to .05 would be among the more effective. In early 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine estimated that 1,500 American lives would be saved each year if every state (again) followed Utah’s lead.

It’s too early to assess the impact of .05 in Utah. But when British Columbia lowered its limit from .08 to .05 in 2010, drunk driving deaths promptly plummeted. Within a few short years, fatalities in the province were cut in half. Studies unequivocally attribute this seeming miracle to the lower BAC limit.

With the pathetic exception of trade associations like the American Beverage Institute, there is unanimous agreement that motor skills are significantly impaired in the .05 to .08 BAC range. Drivers in that range are up to 21 times more likely to die in a single-vehicle crash than drivers with no alcohol in their system.

Lower-limit proponents tend to focus their case on diminished motor skills. It is — or should be — a slam-dunk. I, however, am most troubled by the precipitous drop in judgement that hits right around .05. Having grown up in a culture of drinking, I think that many, if not most, drunk drivers start the night believing they’ll be fairly sober when they drive home. But, all too often, their two or three “safe” drinks erode the inhibitions they depend on to cut themselves off. After a couple more, they are no longer capable of making a responsible decision about driving.

Axiomatically, people decide to drive drunk when their judgement is compromised. If we can get drivers to fear hitting even the .05 mark, more of them will have clearer heads at the end of the night.

This is not mere speculation. After South Australia lowered its BAC limit to .05 in 1991, research showed that there was an immediate and substantial decrease in the arrest rate for extremely dangerous BACs of .15 or greater, which had always been illegal. As it did in South Australia, a .05 limit would inspire more Wisconsinites to pre-arrange alternate transportation. Or maybe we’ll just choose to drink less often. After their 2010 BAC law went into effect, British Columbian restaurateurs reported that notably fewer patrons were ordering alcoholic beverages.

The need for a lower legal BAC limit in Wisconsin is, of course, premised on the notion that we have a problem with drunk driving. If you’re unsure about that, please consider that our mid-sized state led the nation in ignition interlock sobriety failures in both 2016 and 2017. Almost 85,000 times in that two-year period, a Wisconsinite entered his car, hoping to take it out on the road, only to learn that, darn it, he was too drunk.

That would be funny, if it weren’t intensely disturbing.

Michael Cummins is a Madison-based business analyst.