Lower limit still on?

Lord Whitty, the minister for roads, has refused to commit the government to lowering the drink-drive limit - an intention they stated clearly both before the general election and immediately afterwards. The signs are that pressure to stick with the high 80 mgs per cent have paid off.

Whitty, a former general secretary of the Labour Party, was speaking at a Road Safety and Health conference organised by PACTS (The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety). He followed Health Minister, Tessa Jowell, who in a general survey of the problems did not mention drink driving, and Dr Howard Baderman, Accident and Emergency consultant at University College Hospital, London, who identified it as his number one priority in reducing accidental injury. Dr Baderman suggested that it was time to take punitive action against drink drivers and pedestrians who cause accidents whilst intoxicated.

In his speech Lord Whitty referred to the government's 'sensible' drinking policy and said that it was unwise to take alcohol when driving. He pointed out that young men were the greatest offenders. He also said that the rate of alcohol-related motoring accidents had not fallen for five years. A hard hitting Christmas campaign has been launched again this year.

As a consequence the government is looking for new measures and has sought contributions to the consultation process. Lord Whitty has already said that any decision based on this consultation will not be announced until after Christmas. He added that, at the moment, he could not say "which way the wind was blowing" as to what course the government would take. He did, however, say that it was "unsafe to drive with any significant level of alcohol" and emphasised that 80 mgs per cent was the legal level, not the point where driving becomes unsafe. He avoided any reference to the possibility of lowering the limit to 50 mgs per cent, even though he had implicitly stated that, as things stand, it was perfectly legal to drive at an unsafe level of alcohol.

In the question session after the ministers had spoken, a representative of the Institute of Alcohol Studies asked Lord Whitty why the government appeared to be reneging on its previous intention of lowering the limit. Lord Whitty acknowledged that it was clear that a reduction would "reduce accidents and deaths". However, it was a question of what were "the most appropriate" measures, he said, adding that there was a body of opinion which felt that tightened enforcement would have a more direct impact. Lord Whitty accepted that where there had been a reduction this had had an impact. He stressed that there "was no change in the government's position" and that all possible courses would be considered. He did not refer to the fact that the government's position had at one point been definitely in favour of a reduction.

It is worth noting that, since the introduction of the 50 mgs per cent drink drive limit in Germany on 1st May 1998, the number of alcohol related accidents in Cologne has more than halved. The number of drivers caught with a level of more than 110 mgs per cent fell by approximately 25 per cent according to a study published by the University of Cologne. The study was carried out over the period January 1997 - August 1998.

...definitely off?

On the day after the Government's Christmas drink-driving campaign, "Don't Drink and Die", was launched, The Guardian newspaper reported that the Government had abandoned any plans to lower the limit to 50 mgs per cent.

Interviewed at the launch by BBC television, Dr John Reid, the Transport Minister, seated on a bar stool in a pub on Horseferry Road, side-stepped a question about lowering the limit, saying that this was irrelevant since it was wisest not to consume any alcohol when driving. In effect he was pressing the same line as Lord Whitty.

Nevertheless, hours after Dr Reid spoke, Keith Harper, the Transport Editor of The Guardian, felt confident enough to write that plans "to reduce the legal blood alcohol limit from 80 mgs to 50 mgs are to be abandoned by the Government." At the same time Government sources confirmed that between 50 and 80 lives would be spared were the limit lowered.

Although the final decision has yet to be made, The Guardian report says that "ministers appear to have been swayed by the police, who argue that they need more breath testing powers to deal with persistent drink-drivers" If this is the case, then the police have reversed their original position. The Association of Chief Police Officers has been at the forefront of the campaign for a lower limit. It is difficult to see how a lower limit would prevent the police from targeting the hard core of drunks who insist on driving. After all, as John Reid said at the launch of "Don't Drink and Die", 154,000 people were breathalysed last Christmas, 9,700 of whom were prosecuted. There must have been quite a few drivers among the remaining 144,300 who were between 50 and 80 mgs. To a lesser degree, something like these proportions are presumably found during the rest of the year.

The Guardian also states that the Government will not follow up the plan to give police the powers to beathalyse without prior suspicion. In other words, the implication is that there will be no changes at all in the law as it affects drink-driving and the police will have exactly the same ability to target any group of drivers as ithey do now.

At the launch in the Barley Mow pub on Horseferry Road, Dr Reid said, "The intention is to remind the viewer that every day someone dies as a result of a drink-drive accident. I believe that using real cases drives the message home." Those people who die in drink-driving accidents when they are somewhere between 50 mgs and the present limit are real cases.