Drink Driving

Hodders

Hodders

Hodders

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Riding my bike
Whilst I am in no way condoning drink driving it does appear as though the government has blown it out of all proportion.

For example in 1999, only 0.4% of fatal road accidents involved illegal alcohol levels with 2.6% of road accidents involving serious injuries and illegal alcohol levels. Put another way in 1997 only 22 car drivers killed had illegal alcohol limits.

Source of statistics is the government's own national statistics website.

These figures are much lower than I was expecting given the level of publicity attached to it.

Would the money spent be better used in better driver training, free skid pan courses, etc etc ?
 
Just because the accident isn't a fatal one doesn't mean it isn't serious. I think it's a good thing the government has campaigned about it and has now made it socially unacceptable, and surely the campaigning has to be cheaper than giving everyone skid pan courses.
 
We have a habit of applying disproportionate levels of government spending and publicity to various things - drink driving is one, speeding is another, in the meantime, things which really do matter like bends with dodgy camber, junctions in dangerous places and poor road surfaces go unmentioned and unrectified.

It's the same with anything else - pressure to spend millions on rail safety upgrades to save 10 people a decade when a million quid on 10 A road accident blackspots would save many more people..
 
xen_ said:
Just because the accident isn't a fatal one doesn't mean it isn't serious. I think it's a good thing the government has campaigned about it and has now made it socially unacceptable, and surely the campaigning has to be cheaper than giving everyone skid pan courses.
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The %age for serious accidents was 2.6% (plus 0.4% for fatal) implies that 3% of fatal/serious accidents involved illegal alcohol levels.

I dare say that the driver being sober but under the age of 25 accounts for far more than 3% of all fatal/serious accidents.

This would seem to point to either better training being needed for all new drivers or - being logical rather than serious - raising the minimum driving age to 25 would save lives !
 
it would be better if ppl had more training on icey roads etc i know you can do it on pass plus but you dont have to do that
 
Hodders said:
These figures are much lower than I was expecting given the level of publicity attached to it.

Would the money spent be better used in better driver training, free skid pan courses, etc etc ?
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If the government didn't invest in preventing drink driving do you think these figures would be a) higher b) lower or c) about the same?
 
All I am saying is that I was very surprised that the percentage of fatal/serious accidents involving alcohol was so low. I was expecting 25%, not 3% !

Maybe, just maybe there are other ways of spending the money that would save more lives/injuries. For example, how many accidents are caused by worn out/poor road surfaces in wet weather ?

To answer your question, I would imagine that it would now stay the same for some considerable time given the social attitude towards it is now pretty well ingrained. It may well start to rise slightly if people perceive the issue as 'solved'. But even if it did, the net saving in lives lost may well be greater if the money were re-focused to other areas.
 
I know at least 2 people who have lost family to drink drivers.
They've got to be stopped, nowadays especially, I've had to wrestle mates to the ground and steal their keys to stop them getting behind the wheel bladdered, young stupid drivers.

Those figures are useless, outdated. Tell you a pecentage for half of it, and then numbers for the other half. Why tell us about 1999 then go "put it another way" and go back 2 years to 1997? Give us current figures with perspective.
 
Driving whilst tired and road surfaces seem to be a growing problem. The other one is the driving test is based on fulfilling a lot of stupid criteria instead of passing competent and safe drivers that can handle a car.

New and incompetent drivers on poor roads are one of the biggest problem that I see on the roads.

The other is how we are losing our slip roads, and being forced off roundabouts if you keep left after the first exit. I have seen loads of crashes and tonnes of near misses because this.
 
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I get around said:
I know at least 2 people who have lost family to drink drivers.
They've got to be stopped, nowadays especially, I've had to wrestle mates to the ground and steal their keys to stop them getting behind the wheel bladdered, young stupid drivers.

Those figures are useless, outdated. Tell you a pecentage for half of it, and then numbers for the other half. Why tell us about 1999 then go "put it another way" and go back 2 years to 1997? Give us current figures with perspective.
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The sad thing is if someone is hell bent on drink driving, that are going to do it. Do you think a ten million pound TV campaign would have saved you from having to restrain your friend ?
 
[TW]Fox;14790670 said:
We have a habit of applying disproportionate levels of government spending and publicity to various things - drink driving is one, speeding is another, in the meantime, things which really do matter like bends with dodgy camber, junctions in dangerous places and poor road surfaces go unmentioned and unrectified.
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Couldn't agree more....
 
jigger said:
The sad thing is if someone is hell bent on drink driving, that are going to do it. Do you think a ten million pound TV campaign would have saved you from having to restrain your friend ?
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If we had no advertising on it, i'd probably have to restain more freinds.
You're always going to have a few nobheads but unless a big deal is made from drink driving people are just going to think "well it can't be that bad can it"
 
I get around said:
If we had no advertising on it, i'd probably have to restain more freinds.
You're always going to have a few nobheads but unless a big deal is made from drink driving people are just going to think "well it can't be that bad can it"
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No, you must know idiots or children. People will always drink and drive. Same as people will always commit murder and fiddle kids. You don't see adverts saying "Oi, nonce - we've got our eyes on you..." because it doesn't work. The government will say that the campaigns work because less people die. That's because crashing your Mk4 Mondeo is much less likely to result in death than if you crashed your Montego 20 years back.

The Government is simply going for headline grabbers that end up being 'jobs for the boys'. Why not spend £100m fixing some of the worst accident blackspots that claim more lives than drink driving? Because there isn't a quango in it.

I've just got back from Turkey and was having a chat with the guy behind the bar about how mad their roads are - little or no markings, infrequent if any speed limit signs, over-taking on main roads in towns. His take on it was that it was better than our system, because only people who KNEW what they were doing would drive. Slower drivers move right to the side of the road and allow faster vehicles past, over-taking cars use their horns to let the slower car know they are passing. Ok, much less traffic on the road, but he did have a point, we let any timmy retard who is scared of their own shadow drive.

Make the roads less dangerous, educate more, persecute for minor offenses (motorway speeding etc) less and punish bad drivers and those with no insurance more.
 
Memphis said:
How exactly would one go about getting "icey road" training via Pass Plus in the middle of summer?
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you could do it inside on some sort of ice hockey place just on a bigger scale. If people had to do it as part as their learning it would pay for itself. Everyone had 1/2 day learning how to control a car on ice just like Finland
 
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