Even "minimally buzzed" drinkers and drivers are more often to blame for fatal car crashes than the sober drivers they collide with, reports a University of California, San Diego study of accidents in the United States .
UC San Diego sociologist David Phillips and colleagues examined 570,731 fatal collisions, from 1994 to 2011, using the official U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database because it is nationally comprehensive and because it reports on blood alcohol content (BAC) in increments of 0.01 percent.
They focused on "buzzed drivers," with
blood alcohol content
of 0.01 to 0.07 percent, and, within this group, the "minimally buzzed", a blood alcohol content
of 0.01 percent.