Joyces Drink Drive Study Idiotic
Candor Trust

A study to gauge the number of people crashing at 0.05-0.08 is as useful as one assessing the numbers who crash while wearing lacey pink knickers,
because to know if harm is resulting due to pink knickers you need to know two things. How many drivers who don't crash also have pink knickers? Have the pink knicker crashers (if overrepresented) got additional risk factors that explain their crash.

The proposed surveys headlines are already predictable. As Police surveys show 3-4 drivers in a hundred are between 0.05-0.08 Government is likely to find 3-4% of crashes feature alcohol at these levels. The plan to trumpet this irrelevancy is aimed to justify revenue collecting, by introduction of a new alcohol limit.

It is an untrue claim by Mr Joyce that there is insufficient research on whether drivers between 0.05 grams per 100 millilitres of blood alcohol and the current limit are involved in serious accidents. Dozens of studies globally, and local evidence have shown they aren't overinvolved. NZ evidence indicates they're underinvolved, as compared to sober drivers.

There is solid and troubling international evidence from Ireland and Australia however that a lower limit would increase drunk drive crashes among young males New Zealand males especially Maori over the medium term. The cause of this paradox is that a lower limit both misses the point, and shapes risk behaviours in a very bad way.

Firstly lower limits do not reduce averaged blood alcohol levels in the population to any degree that increases safety levels, as lower BACS within the real crasher range of 0.08 up are in over half of dead/killer cases twice as dangerous as they were 10 years ago - due to concommitant drug use.

Lowering average BAC in the drink drive population from say 0.1 to 0.08 is not reducing the relative risk of fatal crashes en masse for 21-34 year olds from a factor of 12 to 6 (Zador)with the scope of crash reductions that would be expected from that by Mr Joyces advisors. Not given that half our drunk drivers are drugged up now, as per NZ roadside Police surveys.

The risk reduction from lowered average BACS (as targeted by lower limit policy)is not even tangible when cannabis is present over half the time. At 0.08 it is 80 to 104x normal when cannabis is involved (Dussault/DRUID, which approximates the risk of a sole drinker at twice the current limit of 108 x normal (DRUID). At 0.04 + cannabis it remains 40x normal. even without alcohol in the mix risk of cannabis intoxication is BAC limit like.

The Ministry and advisors are failing to contend with the facts of DUI offender risk profiles in their obsession with dropping the alcohol limit. Their misunderstanding of what is happening at the coal face is evident in claims that drink driving has increased. It has actually halved in the last decade dropping to only 1% of drivers being over the current limit - where real risk lies.

Yes, paradoxically the crash harm has not reduced but this isn't due to droves of drink drivers. They're few, but drink drivers are more crash prone individuals than they were a decade ago - these individuals haved morphed into superkillers. We know why too. They are piss-pots; mixers of alcohol and cannabis which exactly doubles any alcohol related risk.

The implication of huge importance is that twiddling round with alcohol limits widely misses the point, as the model assumptions have left out a main variable. It's using a cavemans adze to perform brain surgery.

The evidence from Victoria is that lowering the limit caused a switch to reduced alcohol eg 0.04 and cannabis use to boost effects. Imparting a risk factor of 40x normal in those under legal limits, and the lower limit obviously did not impact risk in those at higher blood alcohol levels as expected. 0.05 increased the young male toll as might be expected.

The Government funded groups like NZDF, ALAC, and AHW which unlike victim groups support the non solution of lower adult limits, through poor insight to the fact that orthodox advice is overrun by changes in the drug use trends, are voting for more carnage. Their profile of the dangerous offender is wrong.

Drink driving can't be conquered by lower limits - this focus is dangerous and contra-indicated. NZ needs to grapple with the true nature of the modern DUI offender using more targeted interventions, like treatment (combined with IIDs) and random drug testing as priorities. The quango stakeholders must rethink if they are for supporting revenue, or results.

ENDS

© Scoop Media