Is it time to reduce drink drive limits?

[RonJeremy]

The level of alcohol people choose to have in their body is nobody else's business. What is other peoples business is whether a person is fit to drive. We should therefore tests for fitness to drive i.e. test reactions, coordination and decision making. If someone fails then they are unfit and it shouldn't matter if it was caused by alcohol, taking drugs (legal or otherwise), a disability, nervous disposition or being too old. If you are unfit then you are unfit... let's widen the focus and get all the crap drivers off the road.

 

Oh dear Oh dear Oh dear... an intelligent non-sheep speaking sense on SF. This will never do. Best just ignore it.

[Mecky]

The level of alcohol people choose to have in their body is nobody else's business.

 

It is if they drink drive and plough into people

[RonJeremy]

It is if they drink drive and plough into people

 

But it's fine if they are inept and sober? That's alright then?

[Mecky]

But it's fine if they are inept and sober? That's alright then?

 

Yaaaawwwnn

[milquetoast1]

What do you make of the NICE report I linked to earlier?

 

It attached some multiple of risk of accident for 50 and a greater multiple for 80, but I don't know how reliable that is.

 

You didn't link to it, the pdf link is here.

 

From memory this is the report that was pretty ripped apart on the R4 More Or Less programme. 2010 would be about right.

 

There simply isn't adequate data to produce reliable conclusions. Again from memory, much of the NICE data comes US studies examining reducing from 0.10% to 0.08% where the data is still inadequate, but less so.

 

Here's a direct quote from the conclusions of the main US study which examined differences between different states:

 

"Results - States adopting 0.08% laws experienced a 6% greater post-law decline in the proportion of drivers in fatal crashes with blood alcohol levels at 0.10% or higher"

 

Quelle suprise.

 

Meanwhile the overall effect on fatalities, irrespective of alcohol content laws, remains unchanged.

 

Let's put things into perspective, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration a mere 1 percent of all traffic fatalities involve a driver with a BAC level of 0.05 to 0.08 and it can't be said with any certainty how many of those were as a result of alcohol or just coincidental.

 

It's almost impossible to produce reliable statistics on such small groupings that are not subject to bias, compare against the group just lowered from (0.08 and above) and it appears the reduce fatalities, compare against the group just lowered to (0.05 and above) and it appears to increase fatalities.

 

The only relevant statistic is total fatalities, which is subject to all sorts of different variables.

 

My hunch is that the emphasis on moderate drinkers is counter productive. If 80% of drunken driving deaths involve a driver with a BAC of 0.15 or higher then that is where the emphasis needs to be. Many of these drivers don’t care whether the legal limit is 0.08, 0.05, or even 0.00.

 

I would support compulsory breathalysers in cars, or putting ignition interlock technology in the cars of repeat offenders so their cars won't start if they are over a certain limit.

[RonJeremy]

You didn't link to it, the pdf link is here.

 

From memory this is the report that was pretty ripped apart on the R4 More Or Less programme. 2010 would be about right.

 

There simply isn't adequate data to produce reliable conclusions. Again from memory, much of the NICE data comes US studies examining reducing from 0.10% to 0.08% where the data is still inadequate, but less so.

 

Here's a direct quote from the conclusions of the main US study which examined differences between different states:

 

"Results - States adopting 0.08% laws experienced a 6% greater post-law decline in the proportion of drivers in fatal crashes with blood alcohol levels at 0.10% or higher"

 

Quelle suprise.

 

Meanwhile the overall effect on fatalities, irrespective of alcohol content laws, remains unchanged.

 

Let's put things into perspective, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration a mere 1 percent of all traffic fatalities involve a driver with a BAC level of 0.05 to 0.08 and it can't be said with any certainty how many of those were as a result of alcohol or just coincidental.

 

It's almost impossible to produce reliable statistics on such small groupings that are not subject to bias, compare against the group just lowered from (0.08 and above) and it appears the reduce fatalities, compare against the group just lowered to (0.05 and above) and it appears to increase fatalities.

 

The only relevant statistic is total fatalities, which is subject to all sorts of different variables.

 

My hunch is that the emphasis on moderate drinkers is counter productive. If 80% of drunken driving deaths involve a driver with a BAC of 0.15 or higher then that is where the emphasis needs to be. Many of these drivers don’t care whether the legal limit is 0.08, 0.05, or even 0.00.

 

I would support compulsory breathalysers in cars, or putting ignition interlock technology in the cars of repeat offenders so their cars won't start if they are over a certain limit.

 

A well presented argument

[biotechpete]

You didn't link to it, the pdf link is here.

 

From memory this is the report that was pretty ripped apart on the R4 More Or Less programme. 2010 would be about right.

 

There simply isn't adequate data to produce reliable conclusions. Again from memory, much of the NICE data comes US studies examining reducing from 0.10% to 0.08% where the data is still inadequate, but less so.

 

Here's a direct quote from the conclusions of the main US study which examined differences between different states:

 

"Results - States adopting 0.08% laws experienced a 6% greater post-law decline in the proportion of drivers in fatal crashes with blood alcohol levels at 0.10% or higher"

 

Quelle suprise.

 

Meanwhile the overall effect on fatalities, irrespective of alcohol content laws, remains unchanged.

 

Let's put things into perspective, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration a mere 1 percent of all traffic fatalities involve a driver with a BAC level of 0.05 to 0.08 and it can't be said with any certainty how many of those were as a result of alcohol or just coincidental.

 

It's almost impossible to produce reliable statistics on such small groupings that are not subject to bias, compare against the group just lowered from (0.08 and above) and it appears the reduce fatalities, compare against the group just lowered to (0.05 and above) and it appears to increase fatalities.

 

The only relevant statistic is total fatalities, which is subject to all sorts of different variables.

 

My hunch is that the emphasis on moderate drinkers is counter productive. If 80% of drunken driving deaths involve a driver with a BAC of 0.15 or higher then that is where the emphasis needs to be. Many of these drivers don’t care whether the legal limit is 0.08, 0.05, or even 0.00.

 

I would support compulsory breathalysers in cars, or putting ignition interlock technology in the cars of repeat offenders so their cars won't start if they are over a certain limit.

 

That's a great explanation thanks. The nice report was the only evidence I could find after a quick Google but I haven't had a chance to get on pub med yet.

 

My hunch was the same as yours which is why I went in search of some evidence on it. I guess the best stats will be he results from Scotland before and after comparing to England.

[Cyclone]

I don't have a problem with areduction of the drink-drive limit. If I'm driving I don't drink, simples

 

And you don't drive the next day either?

 

---------- Post added 23-12-2014 at 10:38 ----------

 

What if you have a couple of glasses of wine in the evening, at what time do you drive the next day to ensure that you have a zero level of alcohol?

 

A couple of glasses (hell, lets call it a bottle to be sure).

 

9 units for a 12% wine.

 

Assuming you're entirely average, that's 9 hours from the point you start drinking it, until it's all been eliminated.

 

Say the evening started at 2000, you're good to drive at 0500 in the morning.

[biotechpete]

This study is quite interesting, the first table compares the effect of differing alcohol levels on driving tasks.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395359/

 

---------- Post added 23-12-2014 at 10:55 ----------

 

And this isn't on the reduction to the same level but fairly interesting too:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3823314/

 

Hingson et al. [21], Fell and Voas [22], Tippetts et al. [23], Kaplan and Prato [24], and Wagenaar et al. [25] showed that lowering the BAC from 0.10 to 0.08 reduced alcohol-related fatalities by 5% to 16%, saving approximately 400 lives per year.

 

2.3. Zero Tolerance

 

Zero tolerance was a combination of MLDA and BAC. This act stipulated that drivers under the age of 21 should not demonstrate a BAC exceeding 0.02%. Maryland first passed the Zero Tolerance Law in 1990. In 1995, to encourage other states to enact the Zero Tolerance Law, Congress stipulated under the National Highway Systems Designation Act (NHSDA) that the states that failed to enact the Zero Tolerance Law would lose a portion of their federal highway construction funding. By 1998, all states had implemented the Zero Tolerance Law. Zwerling and Jones [26], Wagenaar et al. [27], Voas et al. [28], Carpenter et al. [29], and Liang and Huang [30] showed that the Zero Tolerance Act reduced alcohol-related fatalities by 4% to 24%.

[milquetoast1]

That's a great explanation thanks. The nice report was the only evidence I could find after a quick Google but I haven't had a chance to get on pub med yet.

 

My hunch was the same as yours which is why I went in search of some evidence on it. I guess the best stats will be he results from Scotland before and after comparing to England.

 

Comparing the results before and after in Scotland won't give reliable results either.

 

It's a statistical nightmare. Thankfully the number of incidents are in the 0.05 to 0.08 range is small, but this makes getting anything statistically significant almost impossible. In addition it is impossible to determine which incidents were the result of those two drinks, or merely coincidental. Add to this that we are actually comparing two different (changed) groups, and it's almost impossible to adjust for them.

 

Legislating to make one group smaller, pointing at the inevitable reduction of incidents in that smaller group and then claiming that it's because of the legislation is flawed logic. It is only employed when there is bias, and it will be employed in Scotland a year or two from now.

 

What matters is the overall reduction/increase in incidents in the population as a whole, before and after. There is no evidence that reducing limits further would have any significant effect on overall incidents.