I celebrated my 20th birthday last weekend.
While that age may be a significant milestone for some (it’s the end of my teenage years), to me, it’s just the last step closer to a more important milestone: turning 21 and being able to consume alcohol legally.
I celebrated my 18th birthday halfway through my senior year in Europe, so I already know what I can look forward to in a year’s time.
Undoubtedly, I, like many others, have questioned why the drinking age was set to 21 nationwide in the late 1980s, and there have been times I wished we were more like Europe.
However, after considering our lax DUI laws and poor public transportation systems, we as a country simply aren’t ready for it to be lowered again.
In European countries, the threshold for a DUI and the punishments that go along with DUIs are much harsher than those we have here in the U.S. Across the board, only the U.K. and Ireland have the same .08 percent blood alcohol content threshold we have here.
For the most part, European countries consider anything higher than .05 percent BAC worthy of a DUI. Some countries, like Poland and Sweden, even have a limit as low as .02 percent.
The penalty for these levels is no laughing matter, either.
In Poland, should you be caught behind the wheel with a BAC higher than .02 percent, you can face up to three years in prison. Higher than .05 percent gets your license banned forever and an even longer prison sentence.
That’s still .03 percent less than what is considered a DUI in all states in this country.
Here in the U.S., most states usually only suspend first-time offenders, which usually constitutes a misdemeanor charge for first offenders if no one is injured.
Even if our DUI laws are improved, though, we would still face another obstacle in lowering the drinking age: adequate public transport.
In my hometown of Warsaw, Poland, even if we didn’t have strict DUI laws, there would really be no need for a car on most nights out. Whether it was clubbing downtown or going to a house party, we were usually able to get drunk without worrying about making sure we had a designated driver.
Despite having only one subway line, the amount of buses and cheap taxis in the city made cars unnecessary for nights out.
Decent public transportation eliminated concerns about driving after drinking and winging it. Even if kids are told all the time of the dangers and consequences of getting behind the wheel while drunk, some have no other means of transport and are willing to try to drive despite their inebriated handicaps.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 1,077 teens died in 2009 after driving drunk.
I don’t have a car of my own, so it’s easy to see how much we need one in our society and just how inefficient public transport is for the most part. Unless you travel with friends, no car generally means no transportation, too.
Between this and our comparatively lax DUI laws, it shouldn’t be too surprising that some people risk such dangerous driving.
Until we fix these two major issues, lowering the drinking age back to 18 would only serve to further aggravate the problem. While the age requirement now only serves as an inconvenience, lowering the age would lead more kids to drink.
If we didn’t see the number of DUIs and drinking-related car fatalities rise, I would be surprised.
Unless these problems get fixed, students like me will simply have to cope while they wait patiently until they’re legal on their 21st birthdays.
Given how I spent my birthday night, I think most of us have learned how to cope pretty well.
Zachary Davis is a 20-year-old history sophomore from Warsaw, Poland. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_zdavis.
 
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Contact Zachary Davis at [email protected]