Reducing blood alcohol limits part of a greater plan to make our roads safer
Reducing blood alcohol limits part of a greater plan to make our roads safer
For years now NZ Police have been banging on the door of successive governments with a plea to reduce the allowable blood alcohol level for drivers to 50 mg per 100 ml.
Police want a reduction in both the adult and teenage drivers’ legal blood alcohol limits.
Since the current New Zealand blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level of 80mg/100ml or 0.08% for adult drivers was set in December 1988, a mountain of scientific evidence has been produced both internationally and locally, which supports the case for reducing the level to 50 mg/100ml or 0.05%.
The push for a lower BAC limit is just part of a larger strategy to address New Zealand’s binge-drinking culture.
Tragic stats
The most recent road statistics available indicate that approximately 25% of drivers involved in fatal crashes had blood alcohol limits in excess of the current BAC limit.
Blood alcohol tests could be carried out on 81% of drivers involved in fatalities in those years.
National Road Policing Manager, Superintendent Paula Rose, is keen to see the limit reduced. So is the Police Association.
The Association has supported Police moves to reduce the limits for under-20 drivers, who do not have a full drivers’ licence to zero, and adults (down to 50 mg/100 mls).
The Association made submissions to this effect to the Justice and Electoral Committee, which considered submissions on the Sale and Supply of Liquor Enforcement Bill in April last year.
“The detection option has seen the addition of two super booze buses join our enforcement fleet and these are based in Auckland, which has the largest concentration of motorists in the country.
The regularity of ‘catches’ is concerning and certainly emphasises the need for us to be vigilant in targeting drink drivers.
As part of this we are mixing up tactics and changing operating hours,” Ms Rose said.
The visibility of booze buses also provides an important deterrent. In the last year,
Police have added a further 200 alcohol testing devices to their arsenal – bringing the total on issue to over 2,000.
Long process
Ms Rose said that while there was work still being done on reducing alcohol levels it had been “a long process”.
“In the meantime, Police are keeping pace with what is happening overseas as well as keeping up with research into how we can do things better,” she said.
The impetus for a reduction in the allowable BAC has come from a variety of agencies with Police, the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), the Alcohol Advisory Council and the Ministry of Health drug policy team having backed a recommendation for a Ministry of Transport evaluation.
The campaign to lower the limit is part of a wider brief to respond to New Zealander’s ‘binge drinking’ culture.
Worldwide call
The bulk of the evidence for a reduction in the BAC limit comes from countries, which have implemented lower legal limits of 50mg or less.
It is so compelling that it has encouraged widespread calls for the establishment of 50mg adult BAC limits from various worldwide health and road safety organisations - including the World Medical Association, American and British Medical Associations, World Health Organisation,
European Commission, European Transport Safety Council, Royal Society fo the Prevention of Accidents, International Transportation Safety
Association, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, American College of Emergency Physicians, and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
While successive governments have, over the years, prevaricated on the call for lower
A recent UMR Research Ltd survey found that 76% of respondents favoured reducing
Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce had a fairly stock standard reply when Police News asked him whether the Government was any nearer implementation of the Police proposal to lower the limits.
“The Government takes drink driving very seriously. Our current focus in this area is on strong enforcement of the existing laws, and education,” he said.
More resolve?
Since then the Government’s resolve is likely to have strengthened on the back of some horrific crash statistics, which have put earlier road toll reduction targets in jeopardy.
Clearly the drink-driving message is slow in getting through to some New Zealanders.
The Easter weekend holiday road toll was 21. In the last 12 months (at time of writing) the road toll had increased by 6.83% from 366 to 391.
The trend is worrying. A Land Transport Safety Authority (now the NZ Transport Agency) study in 2004 found that a third of drivers still believe the risk of being caught drink driving is small.
In 2004, 46% of New Zealand drivers reported being stopped at an alcohol checkpoint, whereas a similar Australian study showed 82% reported being stopped (Williams et al 2000).
Police are committed to detecting and deterring offenders who breach the current alcohol limits.
Highway Patrol officers, in particular, are focused on reducing the carnage on our roads that results from drink driving.
NZ’s alcohol problem
Alcohol is the problem behind the wheel as much as it is on the streets of every city and town on Friday and Saturday nights.
Police in many districts have reported that longer licensing hours have led to disorder and stretched Police resources.
Police estimate that 70% of the incidents they attend are related to excessive alcohol consumption – so it is hardly surprising that converts into appalling road fatality statistics too.
The availability of alcohol has increased substantially in the last three decades.
Compulsory breath testing
In 1993 a lower legal breath/blood alcohol limit for drivers aged under 20 years was introduced, as was compulsory (random) breath-testing. Five years later an immediate 28-day licence suspension for a high breath test reading was introduced.
The most recent attempt to lower the legal BAC for driving to 50 mg/100 ml came in
A year earlier Transport Minister Paul Swain sought to halve the amount of alcohol people could consume before driving.
His proposal apparently fell on deaf ears in Cabinet and the option was not taken up.
The recently passed Land Transport Amendment Bill includes tougher penalties for serious and recidivist drink-drivers, including lowering the legal BAC limit for roadside licence suspension and also gives police officers extra powers to detect drugimpaired drivers.
Zero tolerance BAC for young drivers
Now the Government is looking at a zero tolerance alcohol limit for young drivers.
It says that legislation could be passed by year’s end. It is also looking at raising the legal driving age to 16.
This has met with howls of protest from Federated Farmers, who mooted an exemption for 15-year-olds in rural areas.
The Government has thus far stood firm against that suggestion even though rural New Zealand has been the heartland base for voter support for the National Party for decades.
As any police officer worth his or her salt will tell you – the law must apply equally to all.
The downward trend in alcohol-related deaths and crashes experienced during the 1990s has plateaued, supporting the call for a 50 mg/100 ml BAC limit for drivers and a near-zero level for young drivers.
At 80mg/100 ml for adults (30 mg/100 ml for under 20 years), New Zealand shares= with the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States and Canada one of the highest BAC levels among comparable countries.
Australia, Japan and most of Europe have 50 mg/100 ml legal limits for adults and some (for example, Sweden at 20 mg/100 ml) have lower levels.
Drink driving is largely a male problem. Over 85% of the alcohol-affected drivers in fatal crashes are men.
Horrific toll
In the last five years the number of ACC claims from motor vehicle injuries and deaths (approximately 5,500 per year now) has risen a staggering 25%. In an estimated 25% of those accidents (1,375) alcohol was a contributing factor.
The flow on effect of savings in ACC and to the health sector generally is obvious if the trauma on the roads can be reduced by a change in the BAC limits.
Last year, a Health Ministry blueprint recommended “real and enduring changes” to tackle New Zealand’s drink-driving problem.
The previous Labour administration announced legislation to introduce a zeroalcohol limit for drivers under-20 years of age who do not have a full licence. Statistics show that men aged 20 to 24 pose the most at risk behind the wheel.
Thirty-eight drivers in the 20-24 age bracket died in crashes between 2005-2007, compared with 33 in the previous two years.
By comparison, 20 drivers in both the 15-to- 19 and 25-to-29 age groups were killed in the 2005-2007 period.
A 2008 Massey University study confirmed that alcohol-related crashes involving drivers aged 18-19 have jumped since the legal drinking age was lowered to 18.
Decline
The study showed by year 2000 that alcohol-related crashes declined steadily from almost 300 per 100,000 drivers in that age bracket in 1990 to below 100.
The fall has been attributed to the success of the national campaign against drink driving.
However, the alcohol-related crash rate bounced back after the drinking age was lowered to 18 in December 1999 - from 93 in 2000 up to 144 by 2003.
Researcher Taisia Huckle, who led the study, concluded that it was “likely that the lowering of the purchase age for alcohol has contributed to increases in harmful outcomes for young people in New Zealand, including more serious outcomes such as
The study investigated prosecutions for drink-driving and disorder offences as well
Prosecutions of 18 and 19-year-olds for driving with excess alcohol were steady at around 2,000 for every 100,000 people in the age group in every year up to 1999, but then jumped from the year 2000 onwards to about 2,300 in 2003.
Lives saved
Overseas experience shows lowering the blood-alcohol limit from 80mg to 50mg could save 14 lives and prevent 260 serious injuries a year.
Furthermore, people who have even the current legal amount of alcohol in their blood are 30 percent more likely to be involved in an accident.
The conclusion is obvious – even if a driver is not over the limit, he or she is still a risk to himself/herself and other road users.
Police and alcohol watchdogs are reluctant to say exactly how much drivers could consume to stay within the proposed lower limits because of individual variables such as body mass and the amount of food a driver has consumed.
The ban on cell phone use while driving, lowering of the blood alcohol limits and the raising the minimum driving age are key initiatives in the Road Safety Strategy 2010.
Part of that strategy will involve further education on the risk associated with drink driving, follow-up enforcement and moves to prevent impaired (drugs or alcohol) or distracted driving (using cell phones and a myriad other distractions that drivers engage in from reading the paper to changing the CD or the channel on the stereo).
Additional measures mooted
Another study (Mann et al 2001) suggested that additional measures such as training bar and restaurant staff to recognise intoxication among patrons and the availability of alternatives to driving, such as courtesy/free taxi services, would further the road safety cause and provide effective measures for harm reduction on our roads.
The great work of Police and other agencies in reducing the road toll by 19% between
sources: NZ Police, NZ Transport Agency, The NZ Ministry of Transport, The NZ Health Ministry, Massey University study of 2008, NZ Land Transport Safety Authority study of 2004, The Accident Compensation Corporation, the Alcohol Advisory Council and The Liquor Licensing Authority.
