Disqualification can impact livelihoods and wreck family relationships – but how else can we reduce drink driving?
There can’t be anyone who doesn’t want to see the incidence of Drink Driving reduced: risks associated with it are not only death or injury to drivers and innocent victims – but there can be all sorts of other ‘collateral damage’ for convicted perpetrators …. and therefore, their families …. losing jobs and livelihoods and potentially their homes or relationships.
So, it’s no surprise that the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) is calling for drink driving laws to be overhauled, including a reduction in the legal limit.
A new report – Drink Driving, Taking Stock, Moving Forward – published by the road safety group, shows the scale of the problem, with drink driving one of the biggest causes of road deaths (13%). In the report, 240 people have been killed each year where a driver was over the limit.
I totally agree that it’s time for a review – but I believe that penalties only address part of the problem: sentencing needs to be progressive and part of a wider education strategy about drink driving.
Perhaps for a first offence, even if someone had levels of alcohol that would normally lead to a ban, they should get a ‘qualified disqualification.’ This is where someone convicted is allowed to drive only on a specific route to and from work: it’s clearly restrictive, but enables people to continue working so their family is not affected.
And what we really need alongside that, is a high-profile campaign to raise awareness among the motoring public about the potential impact of alcohol on their ability to drive safely and how easy it can be to break the law.
After all, we don’t just want to bring down drink drive convictions … we really want to reduce drink driving itself.
There are plenty of people who wouldn’t dream of driving home from the pub (once we can all do that again!) after an evening of drinking, but who would have no idea that they could still be considerably over the limit the following morning.
In my work as a defence solicitor, I find many people are completely unaware of just how long it can take alcohol to be processed and work its way out of the body. And there are no precise formulas either – everybody responds differently to alcohol.
The limit for driving in England and Wales is currently 35ug (ug is the legally accepted measure of alcohol in blood, breath or urine) and all alcohol will generally be absorbed into the body within one hour of finishing your final drink.
The rate of elimination, however, is on average, only 3.9ug to 12.6 ug per hour.
With one unit of alcohol being equivalent to roughly 5-8ug in breath, it’s easy to see how the alcohol from a night out could still be with you the morning after. Here’s one example:
Imagine an evening where an average height and weight male drinks three prints and a bottle of wine over the course of several hours, finishing about midnight. That comes to a total of roughly 104ug – which at the lowest ‘elimination rate’ of 3.9ug means he will still be at 70ug at 9am the following morning, more than DOUBLE the legal limit.
Now imagine that he’s unknowingly going to his job – driving a petrol tanker down a busy motorway…
And this is where I think employers could have a major role to play. Organisations which employ drivers can ensure their people know the facts – the levels, the law and the potential consequences.
Remember that the UK has one of the highest excess alcohol limits in the world so even at the prescribed limit it is generally recognised that there is a level of impairment – a risk which employers should manage irrespective of the legal limit
At Auriga Fleet we offer the perfect support system – a series of cost-effective online courses covering all of these issues which drivers can complete at work or at home as well as effective drink drive policies and fitness to drive tests.
Call/email us now to find out more 08000 55 66 31 or [email protected]
[gravityform id=”2″ title=”true” description=”true”]