Safe Speed Forums

I have in the past had correspondence with the DfT on this issue in which they stated that, when the initial legislation was introduced, it was only considered reasonable to impose a severe punishment (i.e. a minimum one-year ban) at an alcohol level at which it could be reasonably assumed that a large majority of drivers were impaired.

For BACS in the 50-80 mg range, this is definitely not the case, and people would end up being disqualified at the lower end of this range when they were not impaired at all.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Fisherman and others

I have to confess that in my youth, I perhaps drank far too much beer then rode my motorbike back home. In all that time I never fell off or anything, never hit anyone or had an accident, but I now realise in in my sober old age that I was an idiot. (or maybe I was actually within the limit !!)

Now, of course, I have a person by my side who prevents me from being an idiot, (my wife). One good argument for marriage, I suppose.

There is a lot to be said for an initial lower limit with consequent lower, and less severe punishment as is done in many European countries. This is the case in France I understand, (although this did not prevent the Diana crash, God rest her soul). The original French alcohol test in the 70s was quite slack, being the equivalent of around 6 glasses of wine, believe it or not !! France was way behind us in adressing its drink driving problem . No doubt the French Government did not want to put the wine industry out of business. It was considered normal at that time to drink a complete bottle of wine at the mid-day 'Dejeuner'.

What puzzles me is that I saw one of the 'Police, Camera, Action' programmes on TV the other night, and it showed a drunk driver being tested by a Highway Patrolman for 'suitability' by a series of tests of eye-hand coordination, but NO BREATH TEST ! This was in the State of Arkansas.

Is the breath test illegal under the American Consitution or something ?

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

True. I do have a problem with lower end as they may indeed fall foul as a result of bathroom and cosmetic requisites.

If the plan is to "harmonise with mainland EU" then the sanction has to also harmonise with mainland Europe.

Be aware that I do not ever condone one drink when we plan to drive or operate machinery.

But I do have a strong sense of justice all the same and I say that if tolerances must be uniform then so too must the punishment. We seem to be less tolerant than the prissy swissy on this one.

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appologies, I am some what passionate about yet another freedom being binned.

As a person who drinks about 20pints a year but allways has to drive. I have to drive as my wife cannot drive at night. You want to take away our access to a meal out. The limits being proposed are so low that no one can drink and drive for the next two days.

And why? because government road safety policy has failed due to mis-management.

Quite frankly I think you think that every one is like the people in your court. It like thos stupid coppers who pull you over and tell you you are lucky you are not over the limit. How insulting!

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

The education benefit, if it even happens, is that the media will pick up on the new law and we'll get a few days where there is stuff about not drink driving all over the TV.

Basically, we are making a permanant law change in order to acheive a one-time short lived benefit. In order to get the same effect again at xmas they would have to lower it again.

As a point of principle, the law should not be altered in this way. If there is evidence that the lower limit is actually the point where it starts to become a danger then that is fine, but merely to "send a message" no. Find another way to get your message across that doesn't involve tinkering with perfectly good laws.

Lets not f*ck about here; drink driving laws are there to prevent those whose ability to drive is impaired with regard to undertaking a complicated technical task.

Bartlett's "Cambridge Cockpit Experiments" showed that 18 hours of wakefulness impairs the ability to conduct complex tasks, like driving, to the same degree as inebriation equal to the current drink-driving limit.

Handy and fisherman especially, and some other posters to a degree, I feel, are hung up on the spin that 'alcohol makes driving dangerous'. The fact is that any number of human factors can impair the ability to conduct the driving task to a satisfactory standard. Alcohol consumption is an easily measurable, and quite valid, measure of impairment, but it is not the only one, nor should it be disproportionately enforced if the true aim is improved road safety.

To clarify; if we are to punish those who choose to undertake the driving task whilst unfit through any reason, then the level of punishment should be commensurate with the level of impairment, and the level of impairment should be assessed equally, whatever it's cause. If, in the name of road safety, those who have had x number of drinks are to be prosecuted, then so should those who have not had adequate sleep within the most recent time-period, proven to cause impairment equal to x drinks.

I am sure you paladins of justice must agree with that!

Absolutely. The problem of course is that there is no road-side sleep-alyser test, so once again we are policed by making important what they can measure rather than measuring what is actually important....

There is a research report done by one of the scandinavian universities (I have the URL at home but I'm out of the country, and will be for the next couple of weeks) that concludes that there is no significant difference in task performance between test subjects at 50mg and 80mg levels.

From this it is reasonable to assume that prosecuting at >50mg will result in far more convictions but no reduction in "drink drive" casualties.

Now where have I heard that before?

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

No apologies needed. I agree with your objections to yet another restriction of the freedom to use our own judgement.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

On the contrary, I want to ensure that you and everybody else can have a night out and drive home without meeting a drunk driver.
If that means those who can't cope without booze for one evening in the interests of their own and others safety have to hire a taxi - so be it.



Just how much alcohol do you drink that it takes you two days to sober up?



I have no reason to suppose that the drivers who pass through my court are statistically any different to those who are dealt with by other courts.

If the limit is reduced, then surely it is incumbent on the government to provide people with meaningful information about how to work out when they are fit to drive after having a few drinks, something they have signally failed to do in the past.

It is completely unrealistic to say "don't drive for twelve hours after having had an alcoholic drink" - and indeed such a message could easily catch out people who have had a heavy session, even if they are doing their damnedest not to be drink-drivers.

It was mentioned in the 1997 consultation paper that the Australians had done this when they had reduced their limit to 50 mg.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I don't consider the present law to be "perfectly good".
The law allows drinking and driving but sets a limit which the driver cannot measure. As a result people guess when to stop drinking and a great many get it wrong.
Lowering the limit would go a long way to preventing that.


The study I quoted in an earlier post from the journal Addiction is a double-blind, placebo controlled one ( in other words conducted to the gold standard for medical trials) which showed that at a blood level of 50 the time to respond to hazards increased from 2.5 seconds to 3.2 seconds. That is just one of many good quality studies which come to the same conclusion.

Somehting to bear in mind next time you are faced with a driver coming at you head on while he overtakes. That extra 0.7 seconds could be very important to you.

Every driver who comes through court was exercising his or her freedom to us their own judgement.

The death by dangerous driving case we passed on to the crown court last week.

The 3 times the limit driver I saw this morning in the Saturday holding court.

Are you really suggesting that freedom of judgement should be unrestricted?

It is widely known that if you confine your drinking to 4 units of alcohol (if a man) or 3 units (if a woman) then you are extremely unlikely to fall foul of the breathalyser. If people think they are OK with higher amounts they are obviously running a risk, or have miscalculated units or quantities.

I doubt whether, in the real world, any significant proportion of convicted offenders (excluding those caught on the morning after) genuinely believed that they were comfortably within the legal limit.

And, wherever the limit is set, people have to guess when it is safe to drive again after consuming alcohol and run a risk of getting it wrong. A 50 mg or 20 mg limit would NOT give any more clarity on this point.

To be honest, your blatant partiality on this matter calls into question your fitness to be a magistrate.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

And a great many others which show the opposite. I would be interested to have the reference for that study in order to see how well controlled it was.





An awful lot of people are convicted at just over the current limit of 80. As far as I can tell just about all of them were careful about how much they drank but misjudged it. If the limit were so low that even one drink was too much they would not drink at all.

Widely known and WRONG.
Its rubbish like that which causes otherwise sensible people to drink too much. 4 units drunk quickly will put even a very big man over the limit. 4 units taken over 4 hours probably wouldn't ,but it would depend on a huge range of variables in the individual subject and can't be relied on.

The truth is that there is NO WAY for any one to tell what alcohol level they will get from a set number of units.



I would say the opposite based on personal experience.



A 20 limit would give clarity for immediate driving. One drink would be too much. For morning after drivers it won't help.



I don't see wanting to help people avoid uneccesary convictions as partial.
I don't see a desire to keep serious drink drivers off the road as partial.


At least I don't put forward dangerous rubbish like the 4 units and you are OK claptrap you believe in.

Do you suggets that because we can't measure sleep deprivation we should not measure alcohol levels?

There are two factors at work here - the maximum potential level and the rate of absorption. See this page from the TRL booklet on drink-driving from the 1980s:



4 units drunk however quickly are extremely unlikely to put a man over the 80 mg limit.

And if you say as a magistrate you are seeing lots of offenders who claim to have only consumed 2 pints of sub-4% beer, then they are lying to you. I have also read that the average BAC of convicted drink-drive offenders is around 160 mg, so I don't know where you're getting all these marginal offenders from.


There is no way to tell precisely, but it is possible to tell the maximum potential BAC. After all, how do you know that a thimbleful of weak shandy won't put you over the limit?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Lots of interesting stuff at Sense on Drink-Driving including the full "8-page booklet produced by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory in 1986" that PeterE refers to!

mb

And this is the problem with the drink drive laws. We have legislation which nobody can know if they are compliant with. This surely cannot be right. I'm just trying to think of another example where the citizen cannot tell if he is breaking an objective limit enshrined in law (assuming that they are aware of the existence of legislation).

The blood alcohol limits are just a proxy for measuring impairment and are based on typical data. It is up to the individual to judge when they should not drive.

I tend to agree with PeterE that although people in court may say they thought they were OK in truth they knew their faculties were affected but took the chance.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.