Stopping drink driving will take more than just lower limit

Stopping drink driving crashes is going to take more than just reducing the adult drink driving limit, says the Automobile Association.

The adult (20 and older) limit will lower to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood (.05) on December 1 and the AA supports this change. The old limit allowed people that were impaired to still be legal to drive and the lower limit reinforces the message to the public that drinking and driving is unacceptable.

However, for New Zealand to really reduce the number of people hurt by drink drivers, there are other changes in the way that offenders are dealt with that need to happen.

“Catching drink drivers is not the problem. The problem is that what we’re doing once we catch them isn’t working,” says AA Motoring Affairs General Manager Mike Noon.

An AA Research Foundation report last year showed that 11,979 or 51.2% of the drink drivers caught in 2012 were repeat offenders.

“A lot of drink drivers are people with serious alcohol issues who aren’t in control of their drinking. Taking away their driving licence is not effective enough at keeping these people off the road and putting innocent lives at risk,” says Mr Noon.

“High risk drink drivers should have to have alcohol interlocks fitted to their vehicles. These only allow a person who is 100% sober to use the car. The courts also need to do much more assessment of drink drivers for alcohol problems so that people with issues can have treatment combined with their sentence.

“More alcohol interlocks in drink drivers’ vehicles and treatment will do more to prevent crashes than the lower limit.”

Alcohol interlocks are devices like breathalysers that drivers have to use before and during a drive. They became a sentencing option in New Zealand in 2012 but, out of 11,692 eligible offenders that appeared before the courts in their first year, just 228 received an interlock licence.

The AA wants all repeat drink drivers or those caught at twice the criminal limit to have an interlock fitted to their vehicle. The revenue from the fines from drivers caught at alcohol levels between .05 to .08 under the new limit should also be used to fund more interlocks for the highest risk offenders.

“Even with the tiny number of interlocks in use in New Zealand there were still nearly 1000 in the programme’s first year when the device wouldn’t let a vehicle start because someone with alcohol in their system tried to use the car. If we are serious about saving lives we need to have thousands of these in vehicles rather than a couple of hundred,” says Mr Noon.

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