Washington Senate passes bill to lower legal drinking limit when driving

Shauna Sowers, The Seattle Times on Jan 29, 2026

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OLYMPIA, Wash. — Senate lawmakers voted to pass legislation Wednesday to lower the legal drinking limit when driving, a move some say will provide more safety on Washington roads.

Sponsored by Sen. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek, at the request of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, Senate Bill 5067 decreases the blood alcohol content limit statewide from 0.08% to 0.05% when driving or operating watercraft.

The proposal would also require the state’s Traffic Safety Commission to develop and implement a public information campaign to inform the public of the decrease.

If passed, Washington would join Utah as the only other state in the country that has a limit that low. The 0.05% limit is standard in many countries around the world such as Germany, Thailand and Australia.

The bill’s passage from the Senate on Wednesday marked the first time the bill in its current form has passed at least one of the legislative chambers. Lawmakers voted to approve the measure, 26-23.

During floor debate, Lovick said the bill is “about community safety” and “about changing the culture of driving in our state.” He said when he started his career as a state trooper decades ago, roads in Washington were some of the safest in the nation, but said he believes the roads are now some of the most unsafe because of drunken drivers.

“Impairment starts with the first alcoholic beverage,” Lovick said.

Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, said he sees the bill in very simple terms — it is about a culture that is broken because it argues how many drinks are too many before getting behind the wheel.

“We need to change that culture and establish a clear guideline that the lives of everyone else in the state are important enough that you should not get behind a wheel once you've been drinking, period,” Pedersen said.

Many Republican lawmakers and a few Democrats were against the proposal.

Sen. Jeff Holy, R-Cheney, also a former law enforcement officer, said that his issue with the bill was that everyone he arrested for a DUI was well above the legal limit and that he believed the state needed aggressive enforcement and prosecution of DUIs instead of lowering the limit.

“My argument with this bill is that we're at the point of diminishing returns and we are addressing people that are not impaired,” Holy said.

While some argued that Utah saw a marked decrease in drunken driving fatalities after it decreased the BAC limit, Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, noted that the decrease was temporary and has increased since then. He also said many of the traffic accidents involved not just alcohol but multiple drugs. Instead, King said he believed having more state troopers would solve the problem of drunken driving.

According to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, 809 people in the state were killed in traffic accidents in 2023, with 409 of those accidents involving a driver impaired by alcohol or drugs. In 2024, Lovick said there were 735 traffic deaths, of which 349 involved an impaired driver.

The legislation now moves to the House for consideration. If passed and signed by the governor, the bill would go into effect July 1, 2026.

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