The number of fatal crashes involving alcohol has decreased over the past decade as police have ramped up education and enforcement for drivers.

But some would argue that even one DUI wreck is too many.The National Transportation Safety Board recently suggested that states could do more to reduce DUI fatalities by reducing the legal blood alcohol limit for drivers to 0.05 from the current threshold of 0.08.Depending on a person’s body weight, that could mean that just a couple drinks could make them legally drunk.The idea has the support of local police, who say a lower limit would deter drivers from driving drunk.Others look at the significant drop in DUI fatalities as enforcement increases, and say that lowering the legal limit probably wouldn’t have a significant effect on drunken driving.“The way it’s going, they’re trying to drive the bars out of business,” Lew Exner, a bartender at Griff’s Ale House in Lehighton, said.The NTSB put out its annual “Most Wanted List” of policy changes, and one of the recommendations was that states lower their BAC to 0.05, or even lower.All of the states currently have the same 0.08 legal limit right now, after NTSB encouraged them to adopt that limit between 1998-2004.“When it comes to alcohol use, we know that impairment begins before a person’s BAC reaches 0.08,” the NTSB says.NTSB actually first proposed the change in 2013 — and public opinion has been slow to come around. Mothers Against Drunk Driving actually say they support other initiatives that would do a better job of reducing fatalities.“MADD currently supports the national standard of 0.08 BAC while also continuing to strongly recommend that those who drink alcohol not drive,” spokesman Malcolm Friend said.Local bars say they take the issue of drunken driving seriously, but they’re afraid of what effect lowering the limit to 0.05 will have on business.Exner was adamant that he has “no sympathy” for drunken drivers after his father was seriously injured in a crash caused by an impaired driver. But he said over his two decades-plus as a bartender, the presence of police has gone a long way to curbing drunken driving.With the new policy, he predicted that most people would be over the limit without actually being impaired.John Lindenmuth opened the Union PublickHouse in Jim Thorpe last year. But he said over a decade in the business he has noticed fewer patrons when there is a change to the DUI law.“There has certainly been a decrease in bar traffic everywhere as DUI laws change, so that would be likely to continue,” Lindenmuth said.Local police say a lower legal limit would probably deter some people from taking to the road after drinking, which is a good thing.“I think having a lower limit would definitely deter people,” Jim Thorpe Borough Police Chief Joseph Schatz said.Schatz said that he too has seen the number of drivers impaired by alcohol decrease as a result of increased education and enforcement about DUI laws.“I believe with the campaigns out there involving DUI task forces, sobriety checkpoints, that is a big deterrent,” Schatz said.He said that a growing problem is actually the number of drivers impaired by controlled substances.The NTSB’s “Most wanted list” also addresses those driving under the influence of controlled substances, but the feds admit that the technology to test whether a person is under the influence of drugs is not as exact as what’s available for alcohol. Schatz said that the laws regarding that issue will probably continue to be looked at in the future.“We’re still moving forward on laws like that to make it safer for residents to drive on the roadway,” he said.