Bringing back the fear factor

shnaek

'Bringing back the fear factor' - the title of a piece in the indo which states

GARDAI who mounted a holiday weekend blitz between Friday night and early yesterday morning randomly checked more than 12,000 drivers for drink-driving. Only 116 failed the test. Since the exercise was on such a vast scale, this must be a representative figure and it must mean that less than one per cent of all drivers were over the limit. Zero would have been even better, but this is an imperfect world. We can rejoice that motorists heeded warnings and improved their behaviour, and that the event so thoroughly vindicated the arguments of road safety campaigners.

"We can rejoice that ...the event so thoroughly vindicated the arguments of road safety campaigners."

What a load of nonsense. All this inconvenience and debate for less than 1% people caught over the limit. And how much over the limit were that almost 1%?

Don't get me wrong here - I condemn drunk driving - but this nonsense about vindicating arguements is too much to take. The only vindication is if road deaths drop. If they don't, then this DOESN'T vindicate those campaigners - but I seriously doubt we are going to see that headline any time soon.

As for "Bringing back the fear factor" - is that how the Indo likes to see Ireland? Living in fear like we have in the past?

This style-over-substance that I see every day in political and media circles is becoming more than a nuisance. Where are the media who tell it like it is, and the politicians who take the hard, politically unpopular decisions which are best for the country?

But papers must sell copies, and politicians must get votes, so we end up with nonsense like this random breath testing which we will see won't even reduce the deaths on our roads by 1%. But we won't get any headlines informing us of that at the end of the year.

magpie

If they'd given all those Rozzers shovels and had them out filling potholes in country roads it would've had considerably more positive effect on road safety. But this is about PR, not road safety.

Dragan

I would ask where the testing was done.....because if there were testing outside the Carpark of the Lep Inn in Sandyford then i'm sure that 1% would be increased.

I'm all for random testing....but do it places where your likely to catch people....or are there only certain types of people we wanna catch?

seamus

That's no statistic.

Breathalyse 12,000 people between 6pm and 10pm on a weekday evening, and you may find maybe one per cent who are over the limit. Breathalyse 12,000 drivers between 10pm and 4am on a Friday or Saturday and watch that figure rise.

All it proves that for a certain time period, one per cent are over the limit.