DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez rallies in Albany to lower New York’s blood-alcohol restrict to 0.05.
NYC DOT
The Adams administration has joined a statewide push in Albany to lower the blood-alcohol restrict for what’s thought-about drunk driving.
City Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez traveled to Albany on Tuesday to rally in help of a bill within the State Legislature that will lower the blood-alcohol restrict from 0.08 to 0.05, which supporters argue may considerably lower drunk driving deaths within the Empire State.
“Whether they are at 0.06 or 0.12 or 0.20, the consequences can be deadly,” the commissioner stated on the rally on the state Capitol’s Million Greenback Staircase.
Drunk driving was answerable for 307 deaths in New York State in 2019, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Practically a 3rd of all deadly crashes in New York that 12 months had been the results of drunk driving, in accordance to the company.
Queens State Senator John Liu, the invoice’s main sponsor, says that decreasing the edge is supposed to make clear the spirit of the state’s legal guidelines in opposition to inebriated driving: folks ought to merely not drink in any respect in the event that they intend to drive, as an alternative of considering they’ll safely eat one or two brewskis earlier than getting behind the wheel.
“The 0.05 BAC simply says, don’t drink and drive,” stated Liu. “And if you are found with a blood alcohol concentration of more than 0.05, then you will be charged with DWI.”
Utah grew to become the primary state to lower its BAC to 0.05 in 2018, and the transfer rapidly confirmed promise: within the new commonplace’s first 12 months, deadly crashes within the Beehive State dropped by practically 20%, the NHTSA discovered.
Greater than 100 nations have lowered their BAC to 0.05, and subsequently saw decreased rates of fatal crashes. The US, too, noticed a substantial decline in drunk-driving fatalities as states lowered their BAC limits to 0.08, with the feds threatening to withhold freeway funds for states that failed to accomplish that.