A road safety expert has suggested that the drink drive limit in the UK should be cut by three-quarters in order to improve safety…
Cut the Drink-Drive Limit
A leading road safety advocate has called on the Government to reduce the drink driving limit by three-quarters. As it stands, the limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 0.80% BAC (80mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood). However, Hunter Abbott, a member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, says it should be reduced to 0.20%.
In a recent column, published on the Road Safety GB website, Abbott has pointed out that the UK limit is actually the highest in Europe. It’s also the joint highest in the developed world. For comparison, the drink drive limit is 0.50% BAC in the likes of Spain and Germany. In Sweden and Norway it’s 0.20%. Hungary and Romania have a zero-tolerance approach, possessing a limit of zero.
Needless Casualties?
In his column, Abbott writes ‘our limit of 0.80 % BAC is far above the ‘point of intoxication’ of around 0.30 ‰BAC where significant measurable effects on cognitive function start to occur. The bottleneck which is stopping us from reducing drink-drive crashes further is the keystone of our drink-drive law – a lax limit based on extremely limited scientific data in the 1960s to define what was ‘safe’.
He continued, ‘more recent and robust research shows at 0.80 % BAC you are 13 times more likely to have a fatal accident than when sober. In Scotland, with its lower limit of 0.50 % BAC, a fatality is still five times more likely. How many casualties could have been avoided if the driver were below the point of intoxication, instead of lethal but legal?’
It remains to be seen whether the Government will act on the advice. However, police forces are attempting to clamp down on drink-driving. Police Scotland, for instance, has recently launched a summer campaign which consists of random spot checks. So far, 2,965 drivers have been tested and 628 were found to be over the limit.
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