Should drink-drive limit be lowered?
Wednesday 16th June 2010, 9:00AM BST.
Radical plans to give motorists random breath tests and lower the legal alcohol limit by almost half have being unveiled.
The Government’s road safety advisor is recommending reducing the drink-drive limit from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50 milligrams – less than a single glass of wine or pint of strong beer.
New drivers could face even lower alcohol limits if the recommendations in the report, by Sir Peter North, are given the green light by ministers.
It is believed cutting the limit could save more than 150 lives a year in England and Wales — and the economy more than £120 million a year by reducing medical costs and lost working time.
However the review was commissioned by the previous Labour government and it is not yet certain if the new Tory-Lib Dem coalition will adopt its findings, although it is believed Transport Secretary Philip Hammond will agree to consider the study.
If implemented, the tougher measures could spell the biggest shake-up of drink-drive laws in a generation.
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This will not stop the hardcore drink-drivers who like to drink 10 pints and then drive, will it? It will affect people who’d like a small glass of wine with a meal and will be driving at the end of the evening.
This isn’t about saving lives else the hardcore drink-drivers would be banned for life and taken off our roads for good. This is about another easy target for revenue-making for the authorities.
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Call a doctor!!! I fully agree with HSJP.
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‘It is believed cutting the limit could save more than 150 lives a year in England and Wales — and the economy more than £120 million a year by reducing medical costs and lost working time.’
Really? Where’s the evidence for that? Are there really that many cases of fatalities where the dominant factor is a driver who is within the current drink drive limit? Or is this a case of one-issue campaigners seeking to restrict our freedoms, in much the same way as they have left our roads littered with speed humps, cameras and other obstacles to safe progress?
We have become so completely risk-averse that we restrict our freedoms to too great an extent – it’s possible that a small amount of alcohol might slightly increase the risk presented by a driver, and where that risk is combined with other risk factors (e.g. inexperience, as with young or new drivers) there may be a case to be presented. Smoking at the wheel might also be a similar risk factor, but no-one is seeking to ban that. The slowing in reaction speeds of elderly drivers might also present a similar risk factor – again no call for a ban.
As or the lost working time – I simply don’t believe it. Is there really a suggestion that having a small amount of alcohol (e.g. less than 2 pints of beer) might affect the ability to attend work the next day? Nonsense!
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I’m 15 and am doing part of my GCSE course work on whether or not the drink driving limit should be reduced to zero, and if you don’t believe this information, then you should know, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that if you have a blood alcohol content of just 0.02%, it then increases your chance of a fatal crash by 2.5-3 times. I personally believe that it’s unrealistic to reduce the limit to zero due to alcohol content in things such as food or mouthwash, but imagine if one of your loved ones was killed by somebody due to a BAC of just 0.02, you might see the topic differently then. At the current limit, you are increasing your chances of a fatal crash by 11-49. Do you not believe that almost FIFTY times more is a bit excessive?
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Helen, don’t believe everything that you read in Government sponsered reports…otherwise you will start believing in Santa Claus, Brake and the Toothfairy.
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Helen,
I don’t doubt that that is a statistic, but i suspect that if you were to look at the evidence behind it you would not find any fatal accidents at all where the primary cause was someone having drunk alcohol, but remaining within the legal limit.
The figures you quote sound scary, but actually, your chances of being involved in a fatal accident are very small indeed, so even an increase of 50 times is not significant. I’m sure we could reduce the likelihood of being involved in a fatal accident even further by simply not driving.
We see similar claims relating to speed, but the evidence, when examined, is much more complicated.
Such conclusions are typically arrived at as much as a result of political pressure from interest groups as on any other basis, and we should be wary of sacrificing personal freedoms to such zealotry.
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I believe the best way to approach this issue is to change the law to zero tolerence. If you drive then you shouldn’t drink alcohol at all. This removes the guess work or ambiguous levels in alcoholic drinks served.
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I’m all in favour, but then I never drink & drive! Anything that will take a few more of these idiots that take chances and 99% of the time end up killing or maiming other people is fine by me.
I’ve always wondered why it is, that if it’s illegal to drink & drive, then why do all Public houses have carparks? Are you REALLY dumb enough to believe that every single car parked there will be driven home by someone that drank only soft drinks? Of course not! Why encourage it in the first place? Coppers should practise hanging around pubs a bit more often and stopping people coming off the carparks and maybe then the figures for drink driving will finally come down a bit more.
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This is a very contreversial topic.
In my many years of driving I can only tell you I have experienced some drivers who drive after a few beers with no effect on their driving. I have however experienced drivers who after a few beers who have been a danger to themselves and everyone else on the road. One driver who I was with I had to tell them to stop and another who was a police officer drove off the road at excessive speed and into bushes and trees, luckily missing the trees.
Alchohol effects different people differntly.
Leave the drink driving limits as they are, would be my recommendation. Reducing the limits would do nothing. Those that are determined to drink and drive will do so no matter what the limit is.
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I agree with Observer – Zero Tolerance is the only way to go – if you drive, you definitely shouldn’t touch a drop of alcohol!
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Lynn,
Do you have any hard evidential base for your views? Or would you simply seek to restrict individual freedom on nothing more than a hunch?
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Peter, I’m willing to have my individual freedom restricted on the base of a hunch, it could save the lives of my near and dear…and there is some science behind it too after all. Hope you never have the misfortune to kill, or be killed, or your near and dear killed due to an impaired driver that just passed the bac test….your fate to tempt I guess.
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I’ve seen stone cold sober drivers who are a total risk compared to people who have had two pints and can drive perfectly well…how do you descriminate between the two?
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