New drink-drive limit: Sniff of the barmaid’s apron

YOU can’t say you weren’t warned. As soon as Scotland lowered the drink-drive limit to a thimbleful of Irn Bru, I told you it would only be a matter of time before there were demands to bring the rest of Britain ‘into line’.

With inevitable predictability, the Local Government Association of England and Wales has now waded into the debate, calling for the limit to be cut from 80mg to 50mg alcohol per 100ml of blood. That’s about a pint of shandy or a sniff of the barmaid’s apron.

You’d think councils would have more pressing matters on their mind, like not emptying the dustbins or using MI5style surveillance tactics to spy on people suspected of trying to get their kids into a school in the wrong catchment area.

The LGA’s Simon Blackburn, who styles himself ‘chair of the safe and stronger communities board’, said the current law was not ‘sending the right message’ to motorists.

Don’t you just love the pompous titles these jumped-up jobsworths give themselves to justify their sixfigure salaries and inflated sense of their own importance?

They’re all very big on ‘sending messages’. Pity they don’t spend so much time doing the jobs they’re paid for. If they want to make a major contribution to road safety — as the late Met Police chief Sir Robert Mark used to say in the old Goodyear tyre adverts — they would be better employed filling in the thousands of treacherous potholes which scar just about every road in Britain.

or getting rid of all those ridiculous ‘traffic management’ schemes, one-way systems and empty cycle lanes which reduce drivers to murderous rage. FAT chance. Far easier to trot out dubious statistics, such as a cut in the limit would save ‘up to’ 170 lives a year and ‘ up to’ £300 million a year by reducing 999 call-outs and hospital admissions.

What, exactly, does ‘up to’ mean? Will it save 170 lives, 17 lives or no lives at all? And if we take the highest figure, does it really cost £300 million a year to deal with 170 road crash casualties?

At the risk of sounding callous, if they’re all dead, how expensive can it be? There’s not a lot of bedblocking involved.

These aren’t even back- of-theenvelope calculations, they’re plucked out of thin air — made up to pad out a press release, so they can be endlessly repeated in sympathetic newspaper articles and on rolling news channels until they are accepted as hard fact.

Now, before the usual suspects start bouncing up and down — accusing me of being a heartless bastard who condones drinkdriving and wants people to DIE! — let’s examine the facts.

As I have written before, lowering the limit still further will do virtually nothing to save lives.

on the last figures available, only 1 per cent of drivers involved in fatal accidents had between 50mg and 80mg of alcohol in their blood. And that’s well within what’s known as the ‘margin of error’.

The vast majority had a reading of over 150mg, with 10 per cent above 200mg. So slashing the limit to 50mg wouldn’t have made the slightest difference in the overwhelming number of cases.

As I’ve also argued in this column, reducing the alcohol limit to half a pint of milk still wouldn’t stop the hardcore driving drunk. only a highly visible police presence on the roads might achieve that.

But the old Bill prefers to rely on roadside cameras — set to nick anyone going slightly over the speed limit, even on empty motorways — rather than waste valuable resources which could better be used investigating historic sex abuse and exciting new ‘ hate crimes’. That’s why you see so much reckless and downright dangerous driving going unpunished these days.

The real intention of those who want to lower the drink-drive limit is not to save lives but to criminalise as many currently lawabiding folk as possible. For the record, I don’t, repeat

don’t, condone drunken-driving. If I’m going to drink, which I have been known to occasionally, I’ll take a cab.

uber is currently getting a kicking from all quarters. I’ve no intention of getting involved in the various squabbles between licensed taxis and uber. I can see both sides of the argument. BUT if a cheap and efficient uber- style service was widely available in rural areas, where public transport is non- existent, the world would be a safer and more sociable place.

Now the weather’s improving, plenty of people will be heading out to the country for a pub lunch at the weekend.

Maybe they’ll think twice if they believe that less than a pint of beer will cost them their licence.

Friends in Scotland tell me that they’re terrified of Wee Burney’s private army lurking outside pubs and golf clubs, waiting to pounce.

Since the limit was lowered, they don’t properly know how much is too much. Some say it’s between a half and a pint of heavy.

But how many pubs will sell you two-thirds of a pint? And anyway, it’s not the careful drivers who stick to a pint or a single wee dram who are the real problem.

Police Scotland claim the new law is working. They would, wouldn’t they? But the economic consequences have been catastrophic.

In the immediate aftermath of the introduction of the 50mg limit, bar takings across Scotland plummeted by as much as 60 per cent. No business can survive an arbitrary two-thirds fall in revenue.

Across Britain, pubs are closing at the rate of three a day — a combination of the extortionate rate of tax on booze and the fear of being caught drink-driving.

Supporters of the cut to 50mg say their real aim is to stop people drinking anything at all before driving. So why not be honest and demand a zero limit?

That’s because they know a zero limit would be a bridge too far for most people. Which is why the Department of Transport is not keen on a further reduction.

Go after the hardcore of dangerous drunk drivers, by all means, but spare the responsible majority who want a quiet pint after work or on a Sunday lunchtime.

We’ve already got the safest roads in Europe. There really is no justification for bringing the rest of Britain ‘into line’ with Wee Burney’s totalitarian state.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been thirsty work writing this column. I could murder a pint.

Taxi!