Criminalising the driver who drinks a pint after work is not the answer to road deaths

IN his letter (August 20), Dr Declan Bedford refers to research in respect of the effect of reducing the legal limit for drink-driving.

In his research, deaths were considered to be alcohol-related if the blood alcohol level of the driver was 20mg per 100ml or higher.

The presence of 20mg could be caused by the consumption of products that have trace alcohol in their composition and to assume that because that level of alcohol is present in the blood was the cause of an accident is at best misguided and at worst mischievous and misleading.

Dr Bedford asserts that seven European countries have this as their legal limit as the basis for using this level. What he fails to disclose is that many of the countries that have these levels as their legal limit have fatalities on the roads at a level way higher than those prevalent in Ireland. For example, both Greece and Poland have a level of 20mg as their legal limit but have fatalities (2007 figures) of 141 and 146 per million of population, respectively, compared with a figure of 80 in Ireland.

Dr Bedford’s research fails to take into account who may have been responsible for any particular accident and assumes that because an individual had trace elements of alcohol in the system he or she was responsible. This is an extremely flawed approach to research.

The Canadian Traffic Injury Research Foundation was asked to examine the benefits of reducing the blood alcohol level from 80mg to 50mg and concluded “our review of the evaluation literature failed to provide strong, consistent and unqualified support for lowering BAC levels”. Indeed the Road Safety Authority (RSA) here, in a report to the minister dated April 3, 2008, asserts that “the research on reducing the level further from 80mg to 50mg has not seen the expected decline in alcohol-related collisions”.

The RSA further states that “the vast majority of fatally injured drivers with any alcohol had blood alcohol levels above even the highest of the legal limits”.

In January 2008, Dr John Madden, the coroner in Donegal northeast asserted “blood alcohol levels of between 50mg and 80mg per 100ml rarely, if at all, figure at local inquests. Looking back over several years the more likely level is in excess of 200mg per 100ml”.

He further asserts that “lowering the limit is not the solution” and that “drivers who have had one or two pints are not the problem”.

Dr Bedford and his colleagues would have us believe that reducing the blood alcohol level is a simple solution to reducing the level of deaths on the roads. In fact what is being proposed will merely criminalise those who have one pint on the way home from work or a glass of wine with a meal out.

The real way to reduce road deaths involves implementing a comprehensive range of speed cameras, improving the quality of the roads and of driver education, implementing the law in relation to seatbelts, encouraging people not to drive when fatigued and implementing the current law in relation to drink-driving.

To quote Dr Madden again, “reason and science, not emotion, should inform this debate”.

We fear Dr Bedford is blinded by emotion and cannot see the reason and science.

Pádraig Cribben

Chief Executive

Vintners’ Federation of Ireland

Dawson Street

Dublin 2