Impact of lowering the legal BAC limit to .03 on teenage drinking and driving related crashes in Japan.

In June of 2002, a revision to part of the Road Traffic Act drastically increased the penalties for drinking and driving offences. Most notably, the legal BAC limit for driving lowered from 0.05 mg/ml to 0.03 mg/ml. The rationale for the new lower BAC limit in Japan was predicated on the assumption that drinking drivers will comply with the new lower limit by reducing the amount of alcohol they consume prior to driving, thereby lowering their risk of crash involvement. This, in turn, would lead to fewer alcohol-related crashes, deaths and injuries. The chief objective of this research is to quantify the extent to which lowering the legal limit of BAC has reduced teenager involved motor vehicle injuries and fatalities in Japan since 2002. Most notably, the introduction of reduced BAC limit legislation resulted in a statistically significant decrease in the number of alcohol impaired young drivers on the road in Japan, indicating responsiveness to the legal change among this group. Since the introduction of the 0.03 BAC law, statistically significant decreases were observed in alcohol-related crashes, alcohol related injuries and single vehicle night time crashes among 16-19 year old drivers, as we hypothesized. In comparison, the rates of total crashes, injuries and pedestrian fatalities showed no statistically significant decline or increase in the period following the introduction of the BAC law.