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Opinion & Analysis |
Thursday, November 5, 2009 |
Short cut needed to tackle our road deathsThis column was drastically edited down from
my 887 words to
just 474, OPINION: There are more practical ways of tackling drink-driving than just lowering the blood-alcohol limit, writes TONY ALLWRIGHT EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS that alcohol in any quantity impairs your judgment and reaction times and can lead to an accident. We all agree with the principle that if you drink then don’t drive. Yet other distractions abound that also impair: the car radio, phone ringing, spouse’s chatter, kids squabbling, billboards, worry, traffic signs and road markings. There is therefore a certain level of alcohol impairment that is no more malign than these. Most jurisdictions have settled on a maximum blood-alcohol level for driving, for example, 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood in Ireland, the UK, the USA and Canada; 50mg for much of Europe and Australia. Ireland has made commendable efforts over the past decade to enforce the law by (semi-)random breath-testing, upping the annual arrest rate for drink-driving from 11,000 to 18,000 and applying penalty points to licences. According to a study by Lane Clark Peacock, a respected international actuarial consultancy, this has helped reduce by about one-third the road death rate. Evidence indicates that what most deters criminals is not the severity of sentence but the likelihood of getting caught. The sure way to deter drink-driving is to increase enforcement rather than lower the blood-alcohol limit. However, in Ireland, there is a problem with enforcement. Health Service Executive (HSE) statistics confirm what everyone instinctively knows: most drunks crash their cars at the weekend – heading home after an alcohol-fuelled night out. So that’s where enforcement should concentrate. Breath-testers should be waiting outside such establishments late at weekend nights to ambush patrons as they stagger into their cars. But this would naturally cause uproar and that’s why our politicians are reluctant to oblige the Garda to properly enforce the existing drink-drive limit. They prefer new legislation (also to be underenforced) so as to be “doing something”; hence Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey’s proposal to cut the limit to 50mg. Two reasons are advanced for the reduction. First, that Europe has largely adopted 50mg (so what?). Second, because, according to the HSE, 18 drivers were killed in 2003-2005 with blood-alcohol levels of between 50mg and the 80mg limit. Yet such a fact by no means proves this range of alcohol caused their deaths. No fewer than 165 drivers were killed with zero alcohol in their system, compared to only 103 killed with up to 160mg. Thus the figures equally “prove”, wrongly, that sober drivers are 60 per cent more dangerous than those with up to twice the current legal limit of alcohol. Moreover, the HSE reported that 65 per cent of all road deaths (1990-2006) are unrelated to alcohol. Most drivers only learn they are over the limit when stopped and breathalysed. Low-cost pocket-sized breathalysers should be marketed so every carouser can keep a check. Every establishment that serves alcohol should install a breathalyser. These are simple measures that will foster a change of culture. 
Tony Allwright is an engineering and industrial safety consultant. His blog can be found at www.tallrite.com/blog.htm © 2009 The Irish Times
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More on this subject in a blog post entitled “Don't Lower the Drink Drive Limit” |
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Comment e-mailed to author on 5th November: I am glad someone has finally pointed out the stupidity of the Puritans' lobby. As you mention, it has always struck me that the most common blood alcohol level for accident victims is zero, yet no one has suggested making that level illegal. They're prissy fools, and they are just one more element in making Ireland an utterly unpleasant place to live. Fianna Fail have no ideas, have ceded most powers to the EU, so all they are able to do is annoy people with his kind of garbage politics. I wouldn't go back there if you paid me 1000 euro per day, and I tell all my American friends not to waste their money on vacationing in Ireland. An utterly uninteresting country, with no vibrant culture and a language many of its citizens hate. GD |
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
Atlantic Blog (defunct) Blog-Irish (defunct)
Jihad
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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