Legal limit slashed, now let’s enforce it

Now that the government has at long last reduced the country’s legal limit, we need to have some proper enforcement on the roads, most especially at this time of year.

This will be the first festive season in which the legal limit for drivers’ blood alcohol levels have been slashed almost in half – from 80 mg/dl to 50 mg/dl for drivers of most normal vehicles, and down to 20 mg/dl for drivers with a probationary driving license and drivers of commercial vehicles.

Moreover, the limit has now been set at 0 mg/dl for drivers of buses, coaches and other passenger-carrying vehicles.

A group of doctors, Doctors for Road Safety (D4RS) this week organised two events reaching out to the public – at the University of Malta and Mater Dei Hospital – on drink driving, where they drove the point home that the new limits mean that for an average 70kg man, one standard drink would bring probationary drivers and drivers of commercial vehicles to the legal limit, while two standard drinks would bring drivers of normal vehicles to the legal limit. For a woman of the same weight, alcohol tolerance is lower still.

The thing is that one should not simply observe the new limits because they are the law, but because it could mean someone’s life. And, moreover, the legal limit or how many drinks one can safely have is not the issue

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here. The point is that even small amounts of alcohol impair driving performance and can lead to road traffic accidents with serious or fatal consequences, irrespective of what the legal limits are.

And this is our yearly message of caution to all road users for this evening, and if it makes just one person think twice before getting behind the wheel after having had one too many, then it will have been well worth the precious page space it has consumed.

In the coming two weeks, much of the country will crack open the champagne and celebrate Christmas and the year gone by and the year to come with merriment and, no doubt, no small amount of boozing.

Our message is quite clear and quite simple: do not drink and drive tonight – your life, your passengers’ lives and the lives of your fellow road users are far too precious to even consider such a risk.

Anyone who has known a victim of drunk driving will tell you that but even if they heard the message, how many of us would pay it proper heed?

The new traffic contravention ticketing system will also help here. No longer will people caught drinking and driving simply be slapped on the wrist, fined, or given a suspended sentence – they now face the very real prospect of having their driving licence suspended should they rack up enough points from their violations.

The new points system is all well and good when it www.independent.com.mt comes to the more minor types of infractions but when it comes to the very real menace of drinking and driving, no amount of fines or points could sufficiently penalise drivers who place their own life, those of their passengers and those of their fellow road users at risk.

And in formulating the new rules, the authorities should have gone further still. As matters stand, it takes 12 points to have one’s licence suspended. But in our opinion, a drink driving offence should automatically lead to a licence suspension, as is practised in a number of northern European countries.

Our message is stressed at this time every year, and it simply cannot be stressed enough: if you have had one too many, do not drive – take a taxi or public transport… walk or crawl.

It is really as simple as that. The potential ramifications are simply not worth a gamble which, if you win, awards you with the prize of having your car outside your front door the next morning. But, if you lose that gamble, the cost can be very dear indeed, and a complete write-off of an automobile could be the least of those costs.

For those who have their priorities mixed up and who have not been deterred by the risk to life and limb that drunk driving poses, the threat of losing their licences may just do the trick.

A happy and safe Christmas and New Year to all our readers.