OPINION:There are more practical ways of tackling drink-driving than just lowering the blood-alcohol limit, writes TONY ALLWRIGHT
EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS that alcohol in any quantity impairs your judgment and reaction times and can lead to an accident. We all agree with the principle that if you drink then don’t drive. Yet other distractions abound that also impair: the car radio, phone ringing, spouse’s chatter, kids squabbling, billboards, worry, traffic signs and road markings.
There is therefore a certain level of alcohol impairment that is no more malign than these. Most jurisdictions have settled on a maximum blood-alcohol level for driving, for example, 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood in Ireland, the UK, the USA and Canada; 50mg for much of Europe and Australia.
Ireland has made commendable efforts over the past decade to enforce the law by (semi-)random breath-testing, upping the annual arrest rate for drink-driving from 11,000 to 18,000 and applying penalty points to licences. According to a study by Lane Clark Peacock, a respected international actuarial consultancy, this has helped reduce by about one-third the road death rate.
Evidence indicates that what most deters criminals is not the severity of sentence but the likelihood of getting caught. The sure way to deter drink-driving is to increase enforcement rather than lower the blood-alcohol limit. However, in Ireland, there is a problem with enforcement. Health Service Executive (HSE) statistics confirm what everyone instinctively knows: most drunks crash their cars at the weekend – heading home after an alcohol-fuelled night out. So that’s where enforcement should concentrate. Breath-testers should be waiting outside such establishments late at weekend nights to ambush patrons as they stagger into their cars.
But this would naturally cause uproar and that’s why our politicians are reluctant to oblige the Garda to properly enforce the existing drink-drive limit. They prefer new legislation (also to be underenforced) so as to be “doing something”; hence Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey’s proposal to cut the limit to 50mg.
Two reasons are advanced for the reduction. First, that Europe has largely adopted 50mg (so what?). Second, because, according to the HSE, 18 drivers were killed in 2003-2005 with blood-alcohol levels of between 50mg and the 80mg limit. Yet such a fact by no means proves this range of alcohol caused their deaths. No fewer than 165 drivers were killed with zero alcohol in their system, compared to only 103 killed with up to 160mg.
Thus the figures equally “prove”, wrongly, that sober drivers are 60 per cent more dangerous than those with up to twice the current legal limit of alcohol. Moreover, the HSE reported that 65 per cent of all road deaths (1990-2006) are unrelated to alcohol.
Most drivers only learn they are over the limit when stopped and breathalysed. Low-cost pocket-sized breathalysers should be marketed so every carouser can keep a check. Every establishment that serves alcohol should install a breathalyser. These are simple measures that will foster a change of culture.
Tony Allwright is an engineering and industrial safety consultant. His blog can be found at www.tallrite.com/blog.htm