The holiday season means holiday parties, and that raises concerns about driving after having too much to drink.

According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, drunk driving crashes are as much as 40% higher between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day than they are the rest of the year.

In 2000, Congress effectively set what's become the nationwide

legal blood alcohol limit for drunk driving. It's higher than it is around the world, and advocates

say lowering it would reduce U.S. fatal car crashes. James Fell is a principal research scientist

at Norke at the University of Chicago, which is a social research organization.

Mr. Felle, you've been studying impaired driving for about 50 years now, I think.

A little over 50.

What has drunk driving done over that period?

Has it gone up?

Has it gone down?

Well, it went down between 1982 and 1997 when a lot of laws were being passed.

We lowered the limit to 0.08, we had administrative license revocation, things like that.

It worked.

But then in 97 we hit a plateau.

And now it's gone up during the pandemic.

I never would have thought that because, you know, you figure the travel

is lower and the fatalities would go down, but it went up. It went up in 2020, 21, and 22,

and 23, it looks like it's leveling off now. But there's been an increase in impaired driving,

and it's mainly due to lack of enforcement.

Now, the legal limit in the United States, and most of the states in the United States,

is 0.08 blood alcohol content. And most of the rest of the world, it's 0.05. How did that come about? How did the U.S. limit come about, and how did the difference come about?

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