Mark Daniels: Drink Driving - it's a number's game

Nobody wants to be seen as condoning drink driving, or defending drink drivers as saintly individuals, but the recent news that Sir Peter North QC has proposed the limit of alcohol currently allowed in the blood before driving becomes an offence be lowered fills me with concern.

In the UK, we already cite motorists as heinous criminals the moment they break the speed limit, answer a mobile phone or pick their nose at a set of traffic lights.

Motoring offences are classed as so serious that many carry prison sentences, even when the offence was merely that of overtaking in the incorrect lane.

Peter North's proposal is that the current limit of 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood be reduced to 50mg. This would bring us in to line with many other European countries and, Sir Peter believes, up to 300 lives could be saved by bringing in such a ruling.

I fear, however, that many more could be ruined by its introduction.

The review, which was initially commissioned by a government so health & safety obsessed that George Orwell's prophecies steadily turned from fiction to fact, plays a dangerous game with numbers.

If we were to reduce the alcohol limit, Sir Peter's report estimates that between 168 and 303 lives might be saved. Alternatively, the number of deaths might remain the same but the percentage caused by drink drivers might, instead, rise. In 2007 a report showed that Britain's drink-driving incidents accounted for 16% of road deaths. By comparison, France has the proposed limit of just 50mg per 100ml, a similar-sized population to ours, but an alcohol-related road death rate of 27%.

While the Government's intentions might be to bring the UK's drinking laws in line with our European cousins, they don't appear to be looking to change the penalties associated with the offence. Sweden, for example, is a country so obsessed with the draconian control of alcohol that it can only be purchased from Government managed outlets and has a drink driving limit of just 20mg/100ml of blood. Merely consuming Night Nurse to help with a cold could put you over the limit. However, unlike Britain's mandatory minimum 1 year driving ban their penalty ranges from a disqualification of three months to three years. In the UK we also face imprisonment of 6 months to ten years depending on the severity of the offence; in Sweden it's just one month to two years.

Portugal (50mg), carries no imprisonment for drink driving offences and disqualification of just 15 days to one year. Our immediate neighbours, France, get a minimum disqualification of just 1 month and a maximum of one year. Imprisonment, depending on circumstances, is just two months to two years.

So the proposal is to reduce the amount of alcohol you can have before driving, but not adjust the penalties to reflect the offence.

People who, up to now, have been decent, law-abiding citizens and safe road users would immediately become criminals. Because of one glass of wine they may lose their license, their job and their home in one fell swoop. The effect on their families and the economy could be devastating and the pub trade could simply crumble because its already-dwindling base of customers would be too scared to step outside their homes for a quiet drink with friends.

And what role does the publican hold in this? When the Licensing Act 2003 came in to force five years ago, more onus was put on to the Publican to ensure he served alcohol in a safe and responsible manner. It is already illegal for us to sell alcohol to an individual who we suspect is going to drink and drive, but how much more liability will be put on us in the event of lowering the drink/drive limit? And what about the responsibilities of the off-trade?

If the motor car were to be invented today it would surely be banned immediately. If they rewrote the rules right now, only sensible people with brown hair and Teflon trousers, aged between 38 and 52, would be allowed to have a license, and only then if the Locomotive Act of 1865 was reinstated.

But that is, of course, the problem with Britain today. We have become so safety obsessed that if alcohol or tobacco were invented right now, like the car they would be banned immediately. With the spread of sexually transmitted infections amongst promiscuous youths it is amazing that we are allowed to copulate in anything other than a Government-controlled environment.

Yesterday, as I waited at the bus stop for my children to return home from school, I couldn't help but notice that at least half the traffic roaring through our village broke the speed limit, 22% of drivers were using mobile phones and three cars still had ridiculous flags hanging off their door frames.

Two drivers took their eyes off the road momentarily to wave a hello to me and one girl was so stupid she was actually eating an apple.

Statistically, then, driving is ruddy dangerous and we shouldn't be allowed to do it. At all.

And so it is with the alcohol limit for driving. A reduction from 80mg to 50mg will mean that the average person drinking a mid-range pint of beer will immediately be over the limit to drive, and this makes having a limit complete nonsense.

Logically, then, if you're going to lower the limit it should be to zero but to have such intolerance would be another step backwards for our nation - not to mention our industry - and would mean that anybody who had a glass of wine with their dinner wouldn't be allowed to drive for a week.

I don't seek to trivialise the offence and I feel grievously sorry for people who have had to endure such a calamity in their lives. Obviously, if one of my children were to be killed by a drink driver I would want them hanged from my pub's sign by their genitals, but I am sensible enough to recognise that reducing the limit from 80mg to 50mg is unlikely to prevent such an accident from happening.

All that will have changed is the statistic: instead of being a tragic accident caused by a driver who lost control of their vehicle, it will become a tragic accident that was caused by a drunk driver.

Lowering the amount of alcohol allowed in the blood before driving, then, won't necessarily save lives. Sadly, it'll just change the numbers. And, without a sensible review of the penalties also imposed on offenders, potentially ruin more lives in the process.