Zero youth alcohol limit needs cautious approach

Zero youth limit
Candor Trust

Reducing the BAC for young drivers from 30/100ml to zero would save at least one life annually (Breen report for Transport Ministry)so it is with reservations Candor approves the targeting of large resources to a symbolic new limit. The Government should proceed cautiously if the lives saved by zero are not to exceed the lives ruined by false convictions.

It must build in the 0.02BAC tolerance recommended by the European Union for young drivers ie move from 0.03 youth limits to 0.02 not absolute zero.

The false positive rate caused by testing inaccuracy that sees perhaps a dozen Kiwis falsely convicted each year was revealed in ESR study by Stowell et al; New Zealand's breath and blood alcohol testing programs: further data analysis and forensic implications (Forensic Sci Int. 2008 Jul 4;178(2-3):83-92).

Failure to build in the required margin of error, in the context of the National Governments recent move to slyly legislate away the right to an evidential blood test for young drivers (a sting in the tail of recent "boy racer" legislation), means issues with the current breath testing technology will see a number of young innocent parties criminalised.

"It's a populist move of low life saving power, but risks being diversional given that our teens are not the locus of drink driving harm - it relates to 12% of their fatalities - but choose other drugs instead. That is OK as it strengthens the current message, but it is intolerable if the dumb down substitutes for real action that follows the evidence", says Spokeswoman for the Trust Rachael Ford.

The urgent needs are to actively not passively confront the mass youth carnage caused by drug driving, and to properly counter via apt deterrence and followup that Treasury VIP "A list" of drunken bloody idiots that the Government loves to repeatedly tax and then forget about, by way of it's rather road safety neutral chequebook points.

ENDS