One drink helps some drivers

BnA

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

Mattie McGrath would want to go back to South Tipperary and his wayward electorate.

Remember, this is the same constituency that re-elected a convicted fraudster a few years ago (Mr Lowry, for those who dont remember).

What a fcuking stupid thing to say. If a driver needs a drink to improve his/her driving skills, they have no place whatsoever on these roads. Or even to hold a driving licence.

Clowns, the whole lot of em. :mad:

For the record you can't pin the re-election of Michale Lowry on the people of South Tipp. He's in the North Tipp constiuency.

But yeah... shockin' shockin' dumb thing to say.

I.S.T.

dudara wrote: »

Firstly, I doubt that such figures exist - it would mean that there is a standard protocol for blood testing all drivers involved in accidents. I don't think that this happens. I think people who shout for these figures know that and are hoping to make this reduced blood alcohol level proposal look foolish. Just because these figures don't exist doesn't undermine the argument in any way.

What about this study by Traffic Injury Research Foundation in Canada that concludes:

Our critical review of the research failed to provide strong, consistent and unqualified support for lowering the BAC limit for drivers in Canada. Therefore, it is our opinion that lowering the BAC limit from 80 mg/dL to 50 mg/dL would have little, if any, impact on the magnitude of the alcohol-crash problem in Canada.
(http://www.aim-digest.com/gateway/pages/drive/articles/BAClower.htm)

dudara wrote: »

Secondly, bringing NAMA etc into this totally different argument is ridiculous. It is akin to people voting NO to Lisbon just to show their annoyance with the government. This reduced blood alcohol level proposal has been coming our way for a while now.

Why now of all times had this topic come up? The RSA say 10 lives a year COULD be saved. However many more will be lost due to the health cutbacks which are taking place right now due the massive screw up by the government in relation to the economy. It is very convenient that this topic comes up and takes over the airwaves right now.

I am not against lowering the limit if there is adequate evidence to show it will have a real impact. If the evidence is available then it should be released for us all to see.

Zube

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

Will Gay Byrne please show us the figures.

The closest I've seen are these numbers from a report from an RSA conference in 2008.

The key data is on page 24 "Blood Alcohol levels in killed drivers":

Not recorded : 35%

Zero: 26%
1-19: 2%
20-49: 3%
50-80: 3%
81-159: 9%
160-239: 12%
240+: 9%

So, does anyone think we should focus on the 3% in the 50-80 group, or should we worry about the 30% who are above the existing limit first?

dudara

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

What about this study by Traffic Injury Research Foundation in Canada that concludes:

Our critical review of the research failed to provide strong, consistent and unqualified support for lowering the BAC limit for drivers in Canada. Therefore, it is our opinion that lowering the BAC limit from 80 mg/dL to 50 mg/dL would have little, if any, impact on the magnitude of the alcohol-crash problem in Canada.
(http://www.aim-digest.com/gateway/pages/drive/articles/BAClower.htm)

I understand where you're coming from with this link. However, I wouldn't compare this survey to the Irish situation unless I knew some more background facts. It is entirely possible (but I don't know for certain) that there is a lower tolerance of drink driving in Canada and that therefore less perencentage of Canadian people drive under 80mg. I think that due to our lax attitude in Ireland, we, as a population, are more inclined to drive following some drink.

Why now of all times had this topic come up? The RSA say 10 lives a year COULD be saved. However many more will be lost due to the health cutbacks which are taking place right now due the massive screw up by the government in relation to the economy. It is very convenient that this topic comes up and takes over the airwaves right now.

I'm not going to argue any form of politics with you. This country is f*cked right now, no matter what way you look at it, and if this is a diversionary tactic, then it's a risible one.

I am not against lowering the limit if there is adequate evidence to show it will have a real impact. If the evidence is available then it should be released for us all to see.

Why not lower the limit anyway regardless of evidence? Common sense dictates that no drink is better than one drink when it comes to driving.

IrishSpeedTraps

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

Agree 100%

Will Gay Byrne please show us the figures. How many drivers between the 50mg and 80mg range are responsible for fatal and serious injory crashes? .

+1

I dont understand why a lot of people appear to think that its people who drink 2 or 3 pints that are causing crashes on the roads. It is people who are completely locked drunk who are causing drink related crashes. This limit reduction is just the government putting on a show to please the bandwagon. The worst thing about reducing the limit imo is driving the next day. Its bad enough now trying to get places the next day after a night out wondering will there be morning breath testing around the next corner but if they keep reducing the limit people wont be able to drive for a fecking week after a night out.

vinylrules

Zube wrote: »

The closest I've seen are these numbers from a report from an RSA conference in 2008.

The key data is on page 24 "Blood Alcohol levels in killed drivers":

Not recorded : 35%

Zero: 26%
1-19: 2%
20-49: 3%
50-80: 3%
81-159: 9%
160-239: 12%
240+: 9%

So, does anyone think we should focus on the 3% in the 50-80 group, or should we worry about the 30% who are above the existing limit first?

Your figures are correct. Strange how the highest deaths of any range listed is the zero alcohol range!

This is also worth reading. (I've highlighted the conclusions at the end)

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/driving/s9p2.htm

Considering the incidence of DUI, it was argued that effective countermeasures that substantially reduce the number of accidents attributable to the effects of alcohol should be directed towards drivers with BACs greater than 0.08%. This also implies that simply changing the legal DUI limit from 0.08% to 0.05% is insufficient with respect to alcohol-induced accidents as the potential reduction would be only about 4%. Further inspection of the risk function indicates that certain subgroups of drinking drivers are responsible for the alcohol-related accident risk in the higher BAC range. Measures capable of deterring drinking drivers in this range were expected to have a substantial impact on traffic safety, namely, result in a decrease in accident rates.

R.O.R

I've just had a quick flick through this:
http://www.apolnet.ca/resources/stats/stats_BAC50mg.pdf

While it's not Ireland, it does seem to point towards a decline in the number of fatalities in areas where the limit has been dropped from 80mg to 50mg.

I.S.T.

Zube wrote: »

The closest I've seen are these numbers from a report from an RSA conference in 2008.

The key data is on page 24 "Blood Alcohol levels in killed drivers":

Not recorded : 35%

Zero: 26%
1-19: 2%
20-49: 3%
50-80: 3%
81-159: 9%
160-239: 12%
240+: 9%

So, does anyone think we should focus on the 3% in the 50-80 group, or should we worry about the 30% who are above the existing limit first?

Ok, excellent stuff, thanks for that.

So as you say 30% of drivers killed are above the current legal limit. 3% are between 50 & 80mg. Fine, reduce the limit if they want, it could save up to 9 people per year. But NOT WITHOUT FIRST allocating more resources to the Guards so they can increase their random breath tests which will help catch the people who are already driving above the current legal limit and causing the vast majority of the crashes.

pburns

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

What about this study by Traffic Injury Research Foundation in Canada that concludes:

Our critical review of the research failed to provide strong, consistent and unqualified support for lowering the BAC limit for drivers in Canada. Therefore, it is our opinion that lowering the BAC limit from 80 mg/dL to 50 mg/dL would have little, if any, impact on the magnitude of the alcohol-crash problem in Canada.
(http://www.aim-digest.com/gateway/pages/drive/articles/BAClower.htm)



Why now of all times had this topic come up? The RSA say 10 lives a year COULD be saved. However many more will be lost due to the health cutbacks which are taking place right now due the massive screw up by the government in relation to the economy. It is very convenient that this topic comes up and takes over the airwaves right now.

I am not against lowering the limit if there is adequate evidence to show it will have a real impact. If the evidence is available then it should be released for us all to see.

Zube wrote: »

The closest I've seen are these numbers from a report from an RSA conference in 2008.

The key data is on page 24 "Blood Alcohol levels in killed drivers":

Not recorded : 35%

Zero: 26%
1-19: 2%
20-49: 3%
50-80: 3%
81-159: 9%
160-239: 12%
240+: 9%

So, does anyone think we should focus on the 3% in the 50-80 group, or should we worry about the 30% who are above the existing limit first?

Good stuff...

Finally some balance injected into this thread. The amount of myopic, PC-bandwagon-jumping this topic stimultes sickens me. So too however does the self-defeating parish-pump politics of Matty the Muppet.

As the post above points out - and we all know it - this is really a smokescreen for the greater ills in our society and body politic. It is also a chance for FF to curry favour with the type of middle-class, middle-of-the road people who are deserting them in droves.

peasant

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

Why now of all times had this topic come up? The RSA say 10 lives a year COULD be saved.

I have (of course) absolutely no proof for this, but IMO this is coming up NOW because the RSA is in danger of losing a significant chunk (if not all) of their budget.

They have to be seen to be doing something, as their record isn't exactly outstanding.

alias no.9

I have no problem with reducing the limit, as far as I'm concerned voluntary compliance with the current limit is not drinking at all if you're driving later that day / evening, so the new limit would make no difference to that. However, I think with our current level of enforcement, it's pointless because the detection levels are so low. Fair enough, this is a minimal resources change but what we need is resources, this is just another pathetic effort to do things on the cheap. Like most compliant drivers, I will see no effective change in my circumstances due to the change because I simply don't drink if I'm driving but similarly someone who flouts the current limit will see no change because they're not being breathylised, that leaves the tiny portion of the population who drive between 50 and 80. It's fiddling about at the edges of a problem that needs to be tackled head on.

vinylrules

peasant wrote: »

I have (of course) absolutely no proof for this, but IMO this is coming up NOW because the RSA is in danger of losing a significant chunk (if not all) of their budget.

They have to be seen to be doing something, as their record isn't exactly outstanding.

You might be onto something there. The drop in road deaths over the past few years probably has more to do with the recession plus the sheer amount of new motorways, bypasses etc., being built. The Dublin Port Tunnel for example, has taken thousands of trucks off the streets of Dublin. Why aren't the National Roads Authority, rather than the RSA taking the credit?

There is another element to this whole drink driving hysteria. The HSE anti-alcohol department (the "alcohol implementation" section as they call it) are all over this. The amount of non-stories being placed in the papers in recent months about alcohol has been unprecedented. I heard Dr Joe Barry calling for the amount of calories to be printed on a can of beer. Heard him on the radio saying "a pint has 200 calories - so if you have five pints that's a thousand calories". (Clearly he thinks people who drink five pints are not capable of doing their five times tables, so we need new laws from our nanny state.) These are the people who recommended that off-licences should be shut at 10pm and they've even called for the drinking age to be raised to 21)
http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=13144

beachlife

The limit will be so low in the future that if you own a car you can't drink full stop. What i mean is if you have a FEW pints on sunday evening.then on monday morning you will be over the limit. Imagine that getting done for drink driving on monday on the way to work!!! And i'm not talking about being on a bender till 4 in the morning. I'm talking about normal people haveing 2-3 pints til closing time and then going home.

Seth Brundle

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

Why now of all times had this topic come up? The RSA say 10 lives a year COULD be saved. However many more will be lost due to the health cutbacks which are taking place right now due the massive screw up by the government in relation to the economy. It is very convenient that this topic comes up and takes over the airwaves right now.

I don't think that reform of the heath service is within the scope of the RSA hence why they are looking to reduce road fatalities but saying nothing about the general economy

Deacon Lively Wafer wrote: »

I dont understand why a lot of people appear to think that its people who drink 2 or 3 pints that are causing crashes on the roads. It is people who are completely locked drunk who are causing drink related crashes.

Not according to many A&E doctors!

Deacon Lively Wafer wrote: »

This limit reduction is just the government putting on a show to please the bandwagon. The worst thing about reducing the limit imo is driving the next day. Its bad enough now trying to get places the next day after a night out wondering will there be morning breath testing around the next corner but if they keep reducing the limit people wont be able to drive for a fecking week after a night out.

IIRC most of the cabinet including the Taoiseach himself is against the proposal because of what it will do to their electoral chances!

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

Ok, excellent stuff, thanks for that.

So as you say 30% of drivers killed are above the current legal limit. 3% are between 50 & 80mg. Fine, reduce the limit if they want, it could save up to 9 people per year. But NOT WITHOUT FIRST allocating more resources to the Guards so they can increase their random breath tests which will help catch the people who are already driving above the current legal limit and causing the vast majority of the crashes.

I agree that enforcement is key. However, that should not stop the RSA in pushing for what they believe is a better set of standards.

peasant wrote: »

I have (of course) absolutely no proof for this, but IMO this is coming up NOW because the RSA is in danger of losing a significant chunk (if not all) of their budget.

They have to be seen to be doing something, as their record isn't exactly outstanding.

But isn't it really Dempsey pushing it (at least visibly)? I haven't heard a huge amount from the RSA.

mikkael

I'm off down to Tipperary this week. I'll head on down to the pub and sit there with the local publican and his 87 year old mother by the stove. On a big night, 3 customers might come in. The nearest town is 15 miles away on a road with so many twists it'd give Michael Schumacher dead arms. Taxi my eye. Who's going to call a taxi doing a 30 mile round trip to go 1.5 miles up the road?

Before someone says "walk it", bear in mind that country roads aren't lit, and most nights it's so dark you can't even see the road. I think we need a bit of perspective in this. There were no spate of road deaths when people were going home from these pubs in areas such as the one I am talking about with drink on them. Sorry, but it's bollocks.

As I mentioned in a previous post, they were predominantly old guys who do dot miles and hour and are used to drinking, and live withing a couple of miles. There's a bit of a difference between them and some youngster getting loaded on an irregular basis. Someone who's likely to kill with drink is someone who's likely to kill sober too. Question - so why are they driving in the first place?

This "it's just not acceptable" pc stuff is getting corny. How many people have died because of home drinking and the boom in off - license sales since pubs were deserted? How many more will die? I'm thinking domestic violence, drink - induced homicide, suicide ... and so on. It's very easy to sit in the bright lights of Dublin and tell everyone what to do having listened to newstalk. Actually living in the country is slightly different.

I'd be in favour of either a total ban or having the limit raised. That way, for once, people would clearly know what the feck is going on. I'm happy to sit there for 2 hours with a Heineken shandy but most aren't. Allowing them drink a little is bullshyte, because I can guarantee you 90% will be over the limit leaving. If the limit gets zero'd, the smoking ban should be lifted. Country pubs are getting wiped out at an almighty rate at the moment.

Incidentally, country pubs in the main should not be confused with urban ones. Believe me, the so - called 'boom' passed over a lot of country publicans.

SupaDupaFly

I'm actually from the same area as Mattie McGrath...ashamed to say! Local people are absolutely outraged by his stupid comments about drink driving. This is the same man who show's up at every local mass, 21st, match, funeral. You name it you'll see him there lookin for publicity...how sad is that in a small town! He was at a halloween kiddies disco on friday nite shakin hands wit 5 year olds! How sad is that? Basically he will go out of his way to get noticed and this is another way of getting any attention. If he is the type of person who could have a say in our country then its no wonder were fcuked!

remotesensor

I think reducing the limit is just a PR stunt. The whole "saving 10 lives a year" is a joke too. I know of one area where people drink and drive all the time without being caught. I have never seen a checkpoint in that area.

Any checkpoints I've been through myself seem to be at the same few places all the time. So if one was to drink drive they would know where to avoid. We don't need a change in the law. We need enforcement of the current laws.

Tipp Man

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

Mattie McGrath would want to go back to South Tipperary and his wayward electorate.

Remember, this is the same constituency that re-elected a convicted fraudster a few years ago (Mr Lowry, for those who dont remember).

What a fcuking stupid thing to say. If a driver needs a drink to improve his/her driving skills, they have no place whatsoever on these roads. Or even to hold a driving licence.

Clowns, the whole lot of em. :mad:

Your not quite right there, Mattie McGrath is a South Tipp TD, Michael Lowry was a North Tipp TD and as far as i'm aware was never convicted

Tipp Man

beachlife wrote: »

The limit will be so low in the future that if you own a car you can't drink full stop. What i mean is if you have a FEW pints on sunday evening.then on monday morning you will be over the limit. Imagine that getting done for drink driving on monday on the way to work!!! And i'm not talking about being on a bender till 4 in the morning. I'm talking about normal people haveing 2-3 pints til closing time and then going home.

I know of at least 2 people who have been done going to work the next morning between 7-8am. they hadn't been on an all night benders either,just a few glasses of wine the night before. Bring it down to 50 and we'll see a huge increase in the instance of this

Drummerboy08

Tipp Man wrote: »

Your not quite right there, Mattie McGrath is a South Tipp TD, Michael Lowry was a North Tipp TD and as far as i'm aware was never convicted

That only proves to me that South Tipp is as bad as North TIpp when it comes to this kinda stuff so.

ShooterSF

Tipp Man wrote: »

I know of at least 2 people who have been done going to work the next morning between 7-8am. they hadn't been on an all night benders either,just a few glasses of wine the night before. Bring it down to 50 and we'll see a huge increase in the instance of this

This is what I'm worried about. It could kill the Sunday night out. Blood alcohol tests the following morning should at least keep the 80 limit.

R.O.R

ShooterSF wrote: »

This is what I'm worried about. It could kill the Sunday night out. Blood alcohol tests the following morning should at least keep the 80 limit.

Ah crap, you're not going to have to give up going on the Piss on a Sunday night so you aren't over the legal limit are you?

The sacrifices some people are going to have to make to save lives eh - bloody liberty from the damn government again.

R.O.R

R.O.R wrote: »

Ah crap, you're not going to have to give up going on the Piss on a Sunday night so you aren't over the legal limit are you?

The sacrifices some people are going to have to make to save lives eh - bloody liberty from the damn government again.

Is there even one scrap of evidence to support the stance that people who drive to work in the morning after a night out are the cause of crashes?

Try living out the country when your only option is to drive to work after a night out, there is no choice but to drive and its hardly fair to ask people to give up going out or we would be heading for a worse nanny state than we are already living in.

R.O.R

Deacon Lively Wafer wrote: »

Is there even one scrap of evidence to support the stance that people who drive to work in the morning after a night out are the cause of crashes?

Is there one scrap of evidence that they are safer than someone with the same amount of alcohol in their blood who has just come out of the pub? Or is it just circumstantial evidence from people who "feel fine" the next morning?

I'm sure the guy who get's in to his car after 10 pints before heading down the wrong side of the Motorway to kill someone in a head on collision "feels fine" before he sets off. That doesn't mean he should be behind the wheel now should it?

pburns

R.O.R wrote: »

Ah crap, you're not going to have to give up going on the Piss on a Sunday night so you aren't over the legal limit are you?

The sacrifices some people are going to have to make to save lives eh - bloody liberty from the damn government again.

I'm sorry but what a load of pious cock:rolleyes: Besides, your statement sounds more anti-drink than anti-drink-driving (which is another issue entirely).

Now we all know the saying about lies, damned lies and statistics but look again at the stats posted earlier in the thread for blood alcohol levels in killed drivers (from a 2008 Irish, RSA report mind):

Not recorded : 35%
Zero: 26%
1-19: 2%
20-49: 3%
50-80: 3%
81-159: 9%
160-239: 12%
240+: 9%

30% of those killed are above the current legal limit, with just 3% within the 50-80mg gap between current and proposed limits. A total of 8% killed are within the current 1-80mg group...but hey...26% of those killed do not have a traceable quantity of alcohol in their system at all:rolleyes:!

All this talk of saving x number of lives is emotive bull. It's theoretical pick-a-number-from-favourable statistics stuff (kinda like what I've done above - only in this case the stats are from the main mover behind the proposed changes!).

To me the stats indicate that we need more checkpoints to enforce the current limit, not headline-grabbing PR stunts to placate the right-on brigade and divert attention from all the other **** going on...

maidhc

pburns wrote: »

To me the stats indicate that we need more checkpoints to enforce the current limit, not headline-grabbing PR stunts to placate the right-on brigade and divert attention from all the other **** going on...

Noel Dempsey... PR stunt... NEVER!

This guy "opened" the Cork Midleton rail line 2 months before it took passengers.. but just before the local election. Go Figure!

Biro

vinylrules wrote: »

Strange how the highest deaths of any range listed is the zero alcohol range!

Careful how you present percentages. That statement might be technically correct, but only by virtue of the fact that they've grouped the ones with limits into categories. It still means that 30% of all drivers killed in 2008 were over the legal limit, 26% had zero alcohol, the rest had SOME level of alcohol, but within the legal limit. By that reckoning, the lowest deaths of any range are the ones with zero alcohol. You could also argue that you are 3 times more likely to be in a fatal accident with any trace of alcohol in your system, but it's not as simple as that.
The fact is enforcement is the only solution to work. Look at when the penalty points came in, for 3 months there were hardly any deaths, then people began to realise that they can go back to their old habbits because no one is catching them.
A 6 month major clampdown on ALL driving infringments would change the attitude of Irish drivers from carefree/careless to very careful and aware.
Even pulling people over and verbally warning them is enough in many cases.

Biro

Biro wrote: »

Careful how you present percentages. That statement might be technically correct, but only by virtue of the fact that they've grouped the ones with limits into categories. It still means that 30% of all drivers killed in 2008 were over the legal limit, 26% had zero alcohol, the rest had SOME level of alcohol, but within the legal limit. By that reckoning, the lowest deaths of any range are the ones with zero alcohol. You could also argue that you are 3 times more likely to be in a fatal accident with any trace of alcohol in your system, but it's not as simple as that.

I am sure there is also at least a certain percentage of the deaths of people with alcohol in their system where the alcohol had no bearing on the crash and it would have happened regardless i.e caused by the driver of the other car etc.

alias no.9

Deacon Lively Wafer wrote: »

Is there even one scrap of evidence to support the stance that people who drive to work in the morning after a night out are the cause of crashes?

Try living out the country when your only option is to drive to work after a night out, there is no choice but to drive and its hardly fair to ask people to give up going out or we would be heading for a worse nanny state than we are already living in.

Try starting and finishing your sunday seission a little earlier. There's no rule saying you have to keep drinking right up to closing time. If everybody is in the same boat, they'll all be out earlier and home earlier too, same seission but still in proper shape to drive the next day.

Drummerboy08

Deacon Lively Wafer wrote: »

Try living out the country when your only option is to drive to work after a night out, there is no choice but to drive and its hardly fair to ask people to give up going out or we would be heading for a worse nanny state than we are already living in.

I do live in the country. If I know I have to be on the road the next morning, I'll still go out, but I just wont drink. Its simple really.

If you really need to go out and drink alcohol, there's something wrong with you somewhere.