Poll Reveals Opinion That Drink Drive Limit Should Be Lower

A poll of AA members has revealed that most people think that the current drink drive limit should be lowered to less than 1 pint. This would bring us in line with Europe. It is thought that this may further encourage the Government to take action. They are already considering whether to bring in random breath tests at the end of the year. The current alcohol limit is 80mg and the idea seems to be to reduce that figure to 50mg per 100ml of blood.

The poll spoke to 17,500 drivers, two-thirds were in favour of lowering the limit, one third wanted a zero limit and interestingly the higher proportion of woman were in favour of the lowering option rather than then the total ban.

The AA president, Edmund King warned that just lowering the limit was unlikely to have much effect on drink-drive deaths, of which there were 540 in 2006.

He said "It's not the entire answer to the problem of drink-driving. Many people are way over the limit and if we just lowered it, it would be no help at all in preventing those who are so far over,".

"There is probably a hardcore who have a drink problem rather than a drive problem."

One interesting fact is that in 1999 there were 460 drink drive deaths and this total is the lowest it has  been before or since.

Monday April 21 2008

For the full story follow the link below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/21/drink.drugsandalcohol?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront