Almost exactly 60 years ago, the British government – a Labour one, as it happens – announced that it was introducing a blood alcohol limit for drivers.
Although driving “under the influence of drink or a drug to such an extent as to be incapable of having proper control of the vehicle”, which is pretty lax, had been unlawful for some decades, the bar had to be raised (pun intended) because of the rising numbers of booze-related incidents.
There was outrage at this attack on the liberties of free-born Britons to drive their Morris Oxford into a tree, or worse, after an evening at the Old Horse, and particularly so because the new breathalyser was being introduced by “a lady minister of transport”, as Barbara Castle was regarded at the time, and she hadn’t even passed her driving test. “Women’s lib” suffered significant collateral damage.
All went well, though. Drivers were more sober, and huge advances in car safety cut the casualty figures (82 per cent of alcohol-related casualties are inside the car).
However, the past four years have seen a reversal in the encouraging post-1960s trend. So the government has rightly decided to look again at the drink-driving limit – and reduce it from 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath to 22 micrograms, bringing England into line with Scotland.
It also proposes compulsory eye tests for people over the age of 70 every three years. This is necessary if only because of the demographics – there are going to be more and more folk on the roads who, well, aren’t quite as sharp in all sorts of ways as they used to be, and you don’t want the likes of the fictional Mr Magoo coming at you in the wrong direction on the motorway.
The flaw in all these excellent proposals from Mrs Castle’s successor, Heidi Alexander (who does drive), doesn’t lie in their merit or stringency but, as ever in road safety, with enforcement.
While speeding and really reckless driving on the motorways can be picked up – and deterred – by speed cameras, it’s not obvious how people over the limit or with dreadful eyesight can be detected on some dark rural lane.
It is an unfortunate fact that the chances of getting caught drink-driving, provided you don’t hit someone or something, are fairly low. This, obviously, means that lower limits and severe penalties are no use if there are no patrol cars out there to bring you to book. The same goes for driving with poor eyesight.
The answer, as with so much in motoring, lies with the technology in your car. Anyone who’s driven one recently will notice the plethora of bings, pings and bongs the car will make if you exceed the speed limit, wander out of your lane, or drive too close to the car in front, measures which have been mandated under EU rules that the car manufacturers can’t be bothered to disable for UK-market models.
They’re – usually – not that intrusive and surely help us drive more safely. Some cars even detect, from watching your eyes and head and measuring the journey time, if you are actually getting a bit snoozy and ought to have a break.
The same sort of approach should be taken to drink-driving – so the car won’t move unless its driver is legally sober. Easy to cheat with a passenger? Well, not if they’ve been on a session as well, and if they’re sober, they ought to be driving, after all.
There is always a risk that any system can be cheated, but it’s hassle and means you can’t plead you made some sort of innocent mistake.
There’s quite a bit of research into the “Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS)”, as it’s cosily known, and Volvo offers “alcohol lock software” as an option in some of its models (but sadly not in Britain).
Of course, one day, if Elon Musk is right, no one – drunk or sober – will need to “drive” anyway in the new fully autonomous vehicles, which will be very good news for all those country pubs that find the current drink-drive regime restricts their clientele.
A boozy night out at the Old Horse and getting home – safely – in the car may soon be a reality once again. Show me the way to go home…
