Madam, - I read with interest the letter of April 2nd from John Madden, the coroner for Donegan North-East. He argues against reducing the permitted blood alcohol limit from 80mgs to 50mgs in the absence of statistical proof that such a reduction would reduce road accidents.
I recently attended a debate in the Scottish Parliament at Edinburgh on this very subject, the outcome of which was an all-party agreement to call upon Westminster to introduce such a reduction.
It emerged during this debate that 50mgs is the limit in all EU countries except Scotland, Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta. The question was posed as to why drivers who would be prosecuted in all other EU countries should "be deemed to be safe enough for Scotland's streets".
It was stated that a UK government research paper for the Road Safety Bill 2006 demonstrated that "at levels of between 50mgs and 80mgs an average driver is around 2 to 2.5 times as likely to be involved in an accident", and that for young and inexperienced drivers (who it seems to me, account for a disproportionate number of road accidents in this country) the "risk may be increased fivefold".
It was also said, inter alia, that figures produced by the UK department for transport estimate that a reduction from 80mgs to 50mgs "could prevent 50 deaths and 250 serious injuries" (presumably in England and Wales), that the House of Commons Transport Select Committee had published a report stating that "there is a case for reducing the limit to zero for novice drivers", and that persuasive arguments in favour of a reduction had been presented by the British Medical Association and the Scottish Police Federation.
While all of this may not provide the specific figures which Mr Madden calls for, it certainly represents a significant body of evidence in support of a reduction.
The full debate can be read on the website of the Scottish Parliament under Official Reports for March 12th, 2008. - Yours, etc,
GERRY WATSON, Lansdowne Park, Dublin 4.