Utah is about to roll out the toughest DUII laws in the country, and now, Oregon could be considering the same thing.
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SALEM, OR (KPTV) – As Oregon mulls over a proposal to lower the legal blood-alcohol limit from .08 to .05, there are mixed feelings about who the change could affect, and how much impact it will have.
The American Beverage Institute for its part, has called the proposal “an attack on the restaurant and hospitality industries” which “converts their responsible patrons into criminals.”
John Henry Hingson III, an Oregon City defense attorney, has similar concerns.
“You can be really, really sober and have a .05,” Hingson said. “You can be convicted of drunk driving if you’re sober driving. You can be convicted by the mere number. Even if you’re as sober as the proverbial judge.”
For bars and restaurants, meanwhile, a lowering of the legal limit for alcohol creates the potential for revenue loss, with customers thinking twice about tipping back that second or third drink.
Still, Stephanie Wilcox, a bartender at the Thirsty Duck Saloon in Oregon City, doesn’t see the change scaring customers away.
“I feel like if you’re being cautious and you’re not overdoing it and you’re staying and hanging out, and spacing your drinks, that chances are you’re not going to go out and do something that’s going to get you pulled over,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox said she supports lowering the legal limit to .05 because it could potentially discourage people from driving even at lower levels of impairment, and encourage them to instead use public transportation or a ride-share service like Lyft or Uber.
The proposal would be introduced by Senate President Peter Courtney and would occur as Utah is about to roll out the toughest DUII laws in the country.
Courtney told FOX 12 the timing with Utah’s law is purely coincidental; he was already considering the move when he learned that Utah is rolling it out.
“State troopers once told me as soon as you start to drink, you’re impaired, and once you’re impaired and you’re driving, you’re driving a deadly weapon,” Courtney said. “So, I just thought, it’s time for us to take another look at this.”
Kristi Finney-Dunn lost her 28-year-old son, Dustin, to a drunk driving crash in 2011. She says he PCC student working toward an Environmental Science degree and was a lover of camping and hiking.
She says he was riding his bicycle when he was hit and killed, and the driver left the scene. When the driver was found three hours later, his blood alcohol content was 0.16, which is twice the legal limit.
“Until you lose a child, or a spouse, sibling, whoever it is, from a totally preventable crash, you just don’t understand the devastation,” Finney-Dunn said. “It’s not just you have to make funeral arrangements and this person is gone, it’s me waking up at 5:00 in the morning for the first year because that’s when I was told, and it’s me wondering if he saw it coming and replaying it in my mind.”
While the effects of blood alcohol vary from person to person, depending on factors like weight and tolerance, the Centers for Disease Control says the difference between 0.05 and 0.08 is significant.
The National Transportation Safety Board reports that previous BAC reductions from .10 to .08 have made an impact in reducing the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths, and the NTSB predicts that reducing the BAC from .08 to .05 across the country would further reduce alcohol-related deaths by 11.1 percent.
Courtney plans to introduce the bill, currently known as Senate Bill 7, when the legislature meets again in January.
For Finney-Dunn, if the proposed reduction in Oregon prevents even one crash, she says that’s reason enough to pass it.
“I don’t think it would have made a difference in Dustin’s case; it was a hit and run, a young boy with poor judgement,” she said. “It’s not going to help everybody, but I hope it helps a few.”
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