One-third of Irish road deaths drink-related

IRELAND has one of the highest levels of drink-driving deaths in Europe, but up to now the authorities have failed to collect official statistics.

A report just released by European Transport Safety Council says more than a quarter of road deaths in the country involved a driver who was drinking and three quarters of those drivers were over the legal limit.

The figures are based on a doctor’s study of coroners’ and other reports held by gardaí into fatal accidents in three counties, in 2003.

The actual figures could be much higher, according to Fine Gael’s road safety spokesman, TD Shane McEntee, and Senator Jim Higgins, especially since the legal limit of blood alcohol is much higher in Ireland than in almost all other EU countries.

Ireland ranked fifth of 27 countries for drink driving road deaths, with 28.2% of all fatal road accidents involving a driver who had been drinking alcohol.

The number of road deaths involving alcohol is even higher when drunken pedestrians are included in the statistics, at 36.5%

But those most at risk are drivers who have been drinking and are alone in their cars. They accounted for almost two-thirds of all road deaths, according to the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA).

Its spokesman Brian Farrell admitted there is no official statistics on fatal drink driving accidents, but said the NRSA was gradually building up and analysing data from 2004 and 2005.

The figures in the European Transport Safety Council report were based on a random sample of Garda National Traffic Bureau files containing pathology reports, coroners’ results and toxicology reports for fatal road accidents.

Part of the problem has been that toxicology reports are not always carried out on road death victims to see if they had alcohol in their blood at the time of the accident.

“We are working hard on getting toxicology reports on all cases now,” Mr Farrell said.

Mr McEntee, however, said: “We can only tackle the ongoing problem of road deaths if we have enough information about what is causing them.

“Without more detailed information on the role played by drink driving we will never be able to stamp out this problem.”

Mr Higgins, who is also a member of the European Parliament, said the legal alcohol limit must be reduced from the current 0.8mg/ml limit.

In other countries, such as Switzerland, when the limit was reduced to 0.5 mg/ml road deaths reduced by 20%, he said. Mr Higgins also called for alcohol testing to be mandatory at the scene of all traffic accidents.

Mr Farrell said the NRSA wanted effective enforcement of the higher limit before lowering it and added that the issue of mandatory testing at accident scenes was an issue for the gardaí.

The ETSC report showed that the Czech Republic had the greatest reduction in drink driving deaths, followed by Germany, the Netherlands and Poland in 2005.

Sweden had the highest level drink-related driving deaths at 34% of the total followed by Slovenia at 32%, France at 28.5% and Estonia at 28.4% in 2005. Ireland was estimated 28.2% in 2003. Luxembourg was lowest at zero, followed by Italy at 1.8%, in 2004, Germany 5.1% and the Czech Republic at 5.5%.